Thursday September 21 2023 | thetimes.co.uk | No 74207
00 to subscribers
Would you pay £22
for a packet of pasta?
Entente cordiale The King and Queen, in a Dior silk crepe dress and cape, with President Macron and his wife, Brigitte, before a state banquet at the Palace of Versailles last night.
Sunak’s green targets gamble
PM relaxes rules on petrol cars and gas boilers to spare families from ‘unacceptable costs’
Steven Swinford Political Editor
Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor
Oliver Wright Policy Editor
Rishi Sunak pledged that he would not
impose “unacceptable costs” on house-
holds to hit the government’s net zero
target as he scaled back green policies.
The prime minister said that in the
past politicians had not been “honest”
with the public about the cost of net zero
and warned that they were in danger of
losing the “consent” of voters and pro-
voking an anti-green backlash.
However, Sunak was criticised by
some Tory MPs, Boris Johnson, the
former prime minister, the govern-
ment’s climate watchdog and industry
leaders, who said Britain risked losing
its lead on green technology.
Sunak used a Downing Street
news conference to announce that
the ban on the sale of new petrol and
diesel cars would be pushed back from
2030 to 2035.
He also exempted a fifth of house-
holds from the plan to phase out the
sale of new gas boilers from 2035.
Sunak said that five million homes, in
which moving to heat pumps would be
“disproportionately expensive”, would
not “ever” have to switch from gas. Sub-
sidies for people replacing gas boilers
with heat pumps would be increased by
£5,000 to £7,500.
The move created a clear dividing
line with Labour after the party said last
night that it would reinstate the 2030
ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol
cars if it won power, arguing that
Sunak’s policy would cost consumers
more and deter investment in the “jobs
of the future”.
In his speech, the prime minister at-
tempted to position himself as the
change candidate before the next
election and said that he would begin to
move on from his five priorities on the
economy, small boats and NHS.
He said: “It cannot be right for
£2.80 £2.
Westminster to impose such significant
costs on working people . . . without a
properly informed national debate.”
Sunak said that unless this approach
were changed, politicians risked
alienating the public and undermining
the aim of net zero itself. He said he re-
mained committed to net zero by 2050
but wanted to “bring people with us”.
He said: “If we continue down this
path, we risk losing the consent of the
British people and the resulting backlash
would not just be against specific policies,
but against the wider mission itself.”
He added: “We seem to have
defaulted to an approach which will im-
pose unacceptable costs on hard-
pressed British families, costs that no
one was ever really told about and which
may not actually be necessary to deliver
the emissions reduction that we need.”
Snap polling by YouGov, carried out
before Sunak’s confirmation of his
plans, suggested that while easing the
boiler and car bans was popular among
INSIDE
TIMES2
many Tory voters, a third felt that the
government needed to do more to hit
net zero.
Sunak’s move to distance himself
from the environmental policies he
inherited drew strong criticism.
Johnson, who introduced the 2030
electric vehicle target, said business
needed to have certainty about the net
zero commitments.
“Industry — such as motor manufac-
turing — are rightly making vast in-
vestments in these new technologies,”
he said. “It is crucial that we give those
businesses confidence that govern-
ment is still committed to net zero.”
The move also divided Tory MPs,
leading to rows on private Conservative
WhatsApp groups. The former
environment minister and Johnson ally
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
called for a general election over
Sunak’s “moment of shame”.
The car manufacturer Ford said that
it had invested £430 million in its Brit-
(based on a 7 Day Print and Digital Subscription)
9 reasons
why you
should get
up early
ish development and manufacturing fa-
cilities, based on a transitioning to elec-
tric vehicles from 2030. Lisa Brankin,
Ford UK’s chairwoman, demanded
“ambition, commitment and consisten-
cy” from the government.
Piers Forster, the interim chairman
of the government’s Climate Change
Committee, voiced “concern” about the
changes, saying they were “likely to
take the UK further away from being
able to meet its legal commitments”.
The former cabinet minister Sir
Jacob Rees-Mogg backed the shift.
“The problem with net zero and having
regulations coming in so quickly was
that it was a scheme of the elite on the
backs of the least well off.
“Rishi Sunak has changed that. He is
going with the grain of the nation and
moving for ‘intelligent net zero’ by
2050, but not putting in costly bans in
the next few years,” he told the BBC.
Labour argued that delaying the
2 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

News

Today’s highlights Aircraft carrier two-thirds

7.40am Kemi Badenoch, business secretary
8am
11am
Jacob Rees-Mogg, former business secretary
Matt Chorley looks at how social and
political attitudes have changed
empty after military cuts
over the past four decades George Grylls Defence Correspondent ously exposed” as a result of cuts. The attack.” He said the overall number of
F-35B, designed for short take-off and RAF fighters was now below the mini-
2pm Laurie Nunn, Sex Education screenwriter The UK’s lead aircraft carrier is two- vertical landing, is flown by the RAF mum which is sensible. “There has been
3.35pm The chef Michel Roux Jr discusses his thirds empty as it leads a major deploy- because it can operate from the ski- a slaughter in terms of the number of
new cookbook, Michel Roux At Home ment this autumn because of the jump runways of the Royal Navy’s two aeroplanes since the removal of the
9.35pm Maggie O’Farrell, right, on the “slaughter” of RAF fighter jet numbers carriers as opposed to the catapult Harrier fleet. When we had Tornado,
stage adaptation of her novel Hamnet in recent years. launchers on US equivalents. Jaguar and Harrier, we had a good 250-
HMS Queen Elizabeth, the flagship But the UK has struggled to fill its 300 fighter aircraft. The politicians say
of the Royal Navy, has the capacity to two aircraft carriers in recent years and the capability of new aircraft is so much
accommodate 36 F-35B Lightning jets the US lent ten F-35Bs to HMS Queen greater, you don’t need the numbers.
DAB RADIO l ONLINE l SMART SPEAKER l APP and was designed to routinely carry up Elizabeth on her landmark tour of the But if you were to engage in a major
to 24 planes on operations. Indo-Pacific in 2021. On that occasion, conflict with Russia or China, you
However, the 920ft long vessel is the carrier travelled with eight RAF would lose aircraft and pilots.”
leading an international patrol around F-35Bs, although one of them was Admiral Lord West, former head of
T O D AY ’ S E D I T I O N Norway and the North Atlantic with destroyed when it fell into the Mediter- the navy, said there was no point having
only eight fifth-generation fighters on ranean off the coast of Egypt. an aircraft carrier without any aircraft.
board, meaning it will be two-thirds The RAF has 31 F-35B stealth He added: “Do you see the American
£3,000 to cover Police examine Russia veto at empty. When the USS Gerald R Ford, fighters, set to rise to 48 by 2025. carriers running around with a few on
the largest American carrier, visited A defence source said more F-35Bs board? . . . It’s a carrier deck packed with
NHS strike shifts Brand claims UN ‘must end’ Norway earlier this year she had more could not travel with HMS Queen Eliz- aircraft that terrifies people. That’s
Consultants have been A national police unit President Zelensky has than 40 aircraft on board, including abeth because ground and aircrew still what makes Putin nervous.”
paid more than £3,000 set up after the Jimmy urged the United dozens of F-18 fighter jets. needed to train at RAF Marham. “It’s a An MoD spokeswoman said: “The
a shift to cover for Savile scandal to Nations to strip A recent report by MPs warned of balance until the fleet size gets to where number of aircraft deployed on the
striking junior doctors respond to non-recent Russia of its right to a “nosediving” numbers of planes in the it needs to be. If there was a war tomor- carrier is decided by a variety of
at rates demanded by sexual offences is veto at the security RAF following “deeply damaging cuts”. row and the carrier deployed you would operational factors including the antic-
the British Medical working with Scotland council as a result of The report by the defence committee see considerably more F-35s,” they said. ipated threat, aircraft needed for the
Association, according Yard officers handling the Kremlin’s “criminal” criticised the early retirement of the However, Air Chief Marshal Sir deployment task and the requirement
to a BBC investigation. claims of rape, sexual war in Ukraine. Russia C-130J Hercules fleet and the downsiz- Michael Graydon, the former head of to continue to train personnel at RAF
Hospitals are paying assault and emotional has been one of five ing of the E-7 Wedgetail procurement the RAF, said eight aircraft was a token Marham to expand the Lightning force
more for strike work abuse against Russell permanent members programme from five planes to three. It gesture. “You’d need all those planes . . . We remain committed to growing
than they are saving in Brand. He denies all of the council since concluded that the RAF was “danger- just to defend the carrier let alone the F-35 fleet.”
wage deductions. allegations. 1991.

£3m wasted on making Editors seek

176
Questions over
Wilko payouts
Wilko’s administrators
are to question the
majority shareholder,
Lisa Wilkinson, on the
£77 million in dividends
paid out in the decade
before the retailer’s
collapse as calls grow
for the Wilkinson
family to plug a hole of
£56 million in workers’
pensions.
COMMENT 23
THUNDERER 24
LEADING ARTICLES 27
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RAF base a migrant camp law to protect
Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor es. Plans at RAF Scampton in Lincoln-
investigations
Kate McCann Times Radio shire have stalled due to legal and plan-
Judge praises Smith to get ning obstacles, and there are only about Jonathan Ames Legal Editor
The Home Office wasted nearly £3 mil- 140 migrants at the former RAF base in
court cameras full-back role lion on abandoned plans to use a Wethersfield, Essex. Newspaper editors and broadcasters
Lord Burnett of Marcus Smith is former airbase in North Yorkshire to The Linton-on-Ouse scheme, de- have called for a specific law in the next
Maldon, the departing expected to make his house migrants. signed to deter migrants crossing the King’s Speech to protect the media
lord chief justice, said first professional start Boris Johnson announced plans to Channel in small boats, faced legal from bullying by wealthy litigants.
that broadcasting at full back when accommodate up to 1,500 asylum seek- challenges from local people, who Ministers are committed to a crack-
crown court England play Chile in ers at the former RAF Linton-on-Ouse warned that the 1,500 capacity would down on Slapps — strategic lawsuits
sentencing remarks the Rugby World Cup in April last year. double the village’s population. against public participation. However,
and appeal court in Lille on Saturday. The Home Office’s annual accounts The plans were eventually scrapped a group of publishers and broadcasters
proceedings had been The captain, Owen showed that the department spent amid the chaos of the Conservative said there had been little progress. The
so successful “there is Farrell, will replace £2.9 million on efforts to repurpose the leadership contest. In August, Ben Wal- group, which includes the editors of
a strong argument George Ford at fly half site into a migrant camp before it was lace, then defence secretary, an- The Times, The Telegraph, the Finan-
that we need to go in a much changed scrapped. The costs related to “physical nounced that he had withdrawn the of- cial Times and The Guardian, has writ-
further”. line-up. works and provision of personnel”, fer of the Ministry of Defence-owned ten to Alex Chalk, the justice secretary.
according to the accounts. They were base to the Home Office. He said: “I It welcomed the pledge to address the
included under the department’s “fruit- have obligations to do something else issue and said that the “next step must
MARKETS 42-43 SPORT 57 less payments” section. with that site, and you know there are be a standalone anti-Slapp bill”.
REGISTER 49 CROSSWORD 68 The department has refused to say other sites we made available to the Pia Sarma, editorial legal director at
COURT CIRCULAR 51 TV & RADIO TIMES2 whether the costs included payments to Home Office if they wish to take it up.” Times Media, said that the campaign to
Serco, the outsourcing company that A Home Office spokesman said: address the misuse of libel laws to the
FOLLOW US was contracted to run the site. The BBC “The government is committed to end- detriment of serious journalism was
timesandsundaytimes thetimes reported last year that the Home Office ing the expensive use of hotels for asy- “gathering the momentum it deserves”.
had agreed to pay Serco £32.8 million to lum seekers which is why we continue A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman
OFFER manage the site on a two-year contract. to source new alternative sites and ves- said: “Our reforms will ensure journal-
It raises new questions about efforts sels, which are cheaper and more man- ists can shine a light on the scourge of
to house migrants at other military bas- ageable for communities.” economic crime without fear.”
THETIMES.CO.UK/SUBSCRIBE continued from page 1 Analysis
PM’s green gamble

R
THE WEATHER 2030 ban on sales of new petrol and ishi Sunak’s election. Until now he investment in the
diesel cars would “cost consumers net zero has concentrated on industries of the
12
more” by preventing a switch to vehicles speech was tackling inflation, future, and reforming
that are cheaper to run, saying it would designed to small boats, NHS public services.
reverse the policy. The party did not say set a waiting times and The idea is to create
18 it would restore a full ban on gas boilers. dividing line with economic growth as a clear dividing lines
14 22 Steve Reed, shadow environment secre- Labour on an issue means of showing with Labour and
tary, told Times Radio: “Labour isn’t that, until now, has that he can be trusted reunite the Tories’
going to put people’s bills up.” been largely the to deliver on his winning blue-and-red-
14 Ed Miliband, shadow climate subject of political promises. Now the wall coalition of 2019.
15
16 secretary, argued that Sunak “simply consensus (Oliver aim is to start laying Yet it also presents
18
sees net zero as an obligation to be Wright and Steven out what he would do risks for Sunak — a
managed, not an opportunity to be Swinford write). if he wins five more majority of the 2019
17 seized. That is the way he behaved at It is part of a wider years in power. coalition still support
8 the Treasury, and that is the way he’s strategy to try to The net zero net zero. It is a
behaving as prime minister.” position Sunak as the announcement is gamble but, given the
“change” candidate likely to be followed state of the polls, one
Sunny spells and scattered showers; against Sir Keir by others on that is politically
longer spells of rain in western Starmer at the next education reform, probably worthwhile.
Scotland.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 3

News

Adventurer who charmed Jackie O

A scholar’s passion for
Indian art was matched
by the affection of his
famous travel partner,
Will Pavia writes
Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II ruled the
kingdom of Bijapur in the 16th century,
composing poetry about his wife and
his best elephant. A miniature painting
captures him aboard the mighty beast,
appearing godlike and serene.
Stuart Cary Welch laid eyes on the
work during a family holiday in 1975.
Welch was a renowned scholar of
Indian art, a travelling companion of
Jackie Kennedy Onassis and a charac-
ter who could have emerged from an
Indiana Jones film.
“He was not as athletic as the Harri-
son Ford character,” his son Thomas
said. But he was just as adventurous.
For his honeymoon in 1954, the Amer-
ican took his new wife, Edith, to Beirut
and overland through Turkey, Iran and
Afghanistan to India. “They had a love-
ly time,” Thomas said.
When the couple and their four
children had a holiday in Britain in 1975,
Thomas, then a teenager, was whisked
away by his father to meet an art dealer
in a London bank vault and to gaze at he said. “I was so shocked
the miniature painting of the Indian I didn’t use my other
sultan and his elephant. hand.”
Thomas remembers his father smil- The economist John
ing. “He immediately wanted it,” he Kenneth Galbraith in-
said. “If he liked something he would troduced Welch to
buy it. I think he paid about £11,000.” Kennedy Onassis.
The miniature, now estimated to be When her daughter
worth up to £500,000, is the star of a Caroline went to Har-
collection of 265 paintings, sculptures vard, the former first lady
and ceremonial objects gathered by arranged a meeting with
Welch that are to be sold next month at Welch. Thomas said: “They
Sotheby’s in London. looked at art together and my
There is a rock crystal flask in the mother brought take-out
shape of a mango, from the Mughal food. They became very close.”
period, inlaid with gold and rubies and They travelled together to India,
emeralds, that may have served as a twice, once to prepare for a 1985
perfume bottle. And a dagger with a exhibition at the Met, entitled
handle shaped like a lion devouring an India! Welch took her with him
eagle, set with emeralds and rubies, to try “to get the maharajas to
from Bijapur, in southern lend art for the exhibition”,
India, about the time Thomas said.
Sultan Ibrahim was on Kennedy Onassis wrote
the throne. Stuart Cary Welch was devoted to afterwards that “there has
The miniature chasing art, especially treasures never been such happiness
painting of the sultan of the Mughal empire, including a as travelling with you and
is by Farrukh Beg, a painting of Sultan Ibrahim, above. the let down is terrible.
Persian artist who be- Jackie Kennedy Onassis wrote of “You make people feel
came the Holbein of the her joy at travelling with Welch as if they had about four
Mughal period. extra senses.”
Benedict Carter, head of Islamic and they could be acquired relatively tures, said he Thomas’s mother, Ed-
Indian art at Sotheby’s, said the sultan cheaply at the time. He attended Har- loved Cary de- ith, recently celebrated
was seated on his favourite elephant. vard, where he became a pioneer in the spite his under- her 91st birthday. But
Welch was captivated by Indian art as study of Islamic and Indian art. He was hand tactics. “He Welch died in 2008, at
a boy visiting museums. Thomas said a curator at Harvard Art Museums and once sat next to the age of 80. Thomas
his first purchase at the age of nine was a consultant to the Metropolitan me at a sale and said he died on the Jap-
of an African throwing knife. Museum of Art in New York. held my hand anese island of Hokkaido,
In his teens he spent his allowance on Howard Hodgkin, the British artist down to stop hunting up Buddhist ritual
drawings by Indian masters, finding and a fellow collector of Indian minia- me bidding,” implements — “still chasing art”.

Why burying those bad thoughts can be a good idea after all
Rhys Blakely Science Correspondent
Forget talking through your anxieties
on a therapist’s couch, the best way of
dealing with your fears might be to
suppress them, according to scientists.
Teaching people to maintain a “stiff
upper lip” by keeping negative thoughts
in check can boost their mental health,
according to a study that appears to
challenge a pillar of psychoanalytical
theory.
“We’re all familiar with the Freudian
idea that if we suppress our feelings or
thoughts, then these thoughts remain
in our unconscious, influencing our
behaviour and wellbeing perniciously,”
said Professor Michael Anderson, of the
University of Cambridge. “The whole
point of psychotherapy is to dredge up
these thoughts so one can deal with
them and rob them of their power.”
However, an experiment by Ander-
son and his colleague Dr Zulkayda Ma-
mat found when people were trained to
subdue negative thoughts they tended,
on average, to become less anxious and
less vulnerable to depression.
They recruited 120 people who were
asked to list 20 frightening but plausible
scenarios that they had worried about.
They were asked to give each scenario
a title that could be used to evoke it. For
example, if it involved a parent having
to go into intensive care, the title could
be “hospital”.
They did the same for mundane
“neutral” scenarios and for positive
ones. The volunteers then got training
sessions for three days running. While
looking at certain cue words on a
screen, they were asked to block out
any images or thoughts the words
evoked. They were not given detailed
instructions on how to do this, but were
asked not to distract themselves by
thinking about something else entirely.
Some were shown only negative
words. Others saw neutral ones, while a
third group was asked to dwell on their
positive scenarios.
Before the training and three months
later, they completed questionnaires to
assess depression, anxiety and general
mental wellbeing. Bigger positive
changes were consistently seen among
those who had been trained to suppress
their negative scenarios. For instance,
the chances of depression scores wor-
sening were cut by nearly 60 per cent,
compared with the group that had
blocked only neutral scenarios.
Nine out of ten of those taught the
technique said they had found it useful.
The study was relatively small and
other experts warned that the approach
might not be suitable for everybody.
But Anderson believes the results are
encouraging. “Nowadays you’re sup-
posed to share everything and be open
about everything and to ‘process’
things,” he said. “But for a lot of the neg-
ative stuff that comes across our minds,
it’s simply not worth allowing it to occu-
py our mental headspace. Far better to
keep calm and carry on.”
The results are published in the jour-
nal Science Advances.
4 2GM
News
News State visit to France
Roi polloi turn out in force to
Valentine Low Paris
“Vive le Roi!” is not a cry that has been
heard often in Paris since 1789. Yester-
day, however, in a show of affection for
the King if not quite a full-throated call
for the return of their own monarchy,
the French gave Charles and Camilla
the warmest of welcomes as they em-
barked on their rescheduled state visit.
The trip, which officials hope will
build on the improvement in Franco-
British relations since Boris Johnson
resigned as prime minister, featured the
couple being treated to a grand ceremo-
nial welcome at the Arc de Triomphe
followed by a state banquet at the Pal-
ace of Versailles.
In his speech, in which he spoke part-
ly in French of everything from the
nation’s tributes to the late Queen to his
love of Édith Piaf, the King called the
“firm friendship” between Britain and
France “our Entente Cordiale — a sus-
tainable alliance”.
Thanking President Macron for his
“exceptionally generous hospitality”,
he said: “Your generosity of spirit brings
to mind how my family and I were so
greatly moved by the tributes paid in
France to my mother, the late Queen,
whose funeral took place one year ago
yesterday. Mr President, among the
many profoundly moving gestures
here, the flying of the union flag at the
Élysée was particularly poignant.
“Your words, at that time, meant a
great deal to us too. You said that she
had touched your hearts — and it was
she who held France in the greatest
affection.
“My parents’ first official visit to-
gether was to France in 1948, shortly
after their wedding. By all accounts,
they made quite a splash, dancing till
the early hours at the glamorous Chez
Carrère in the Rue Pierre Charron,
serenaded by Édith Piaf. I suspect it
may have left an indelible impression
on me, even six months before I was
born — La Vie en Rose is one of my fa-
vourite songs to this day!”
The couple arrived at a windswept
Orly airport where the Queen had to
hold on to her hat to stop it blowing off.
By the time they got to the Arc de Tri-
Cordiale reception for latecomers
Adam Sage Paris
The state visit was widely portrayed
in France as an opportunity to
strengthen ties that had been weaken-
ed by Brexit and the premiership of
Boris Johnson.
There was some criticism of the
decision to lay on a banquet in the
Palace of Versailles, which was home
to the French monarchy under
the ancien régime, but it was
mostly muted and aimed at
President Macron rather than the
visiting royals.
Even the left-wing heirs
to France’s guillotine-wielding
tradition appeared to be
in a charitable mood,
with Charles getting
good press.
Libération, the left-
wing daily, put the King
on its front page under
the headline “Charly in
Paris”, a nod to the Netflix
show Emily in Paris.
Far from threatening to
cut off his head, the news-
paper described his visit as
“crucial because it is a ques-
tion . . . of renewing the
bonds between London and
Paris [which have been]
very stretched in recent
The menu at Versailles
Entree Blue lobster and crab cake,
below, with a veil of fresh almonds
and rooster mint by the chef Anne-
Sophie Pic, whose Maison Pic
restaurant has three Michelin stars.
Main course Bresse poultry,
marinated in champagne, with a cep
gratin. It was created by Yannick
Alléno, who holds 15 Michelin stars.
Cheese 30-month Comté from
France and stichelton from Britain,
with mirabelle plum jelly.
Dessert Ispahan from the pastry
chef Pierre Hermé — a raspberry
dessert served on a thin disc of
macaroon and drizzled with a
raspberry coulis. Specially
requested by Brigitte Macron.
omphe, the true meaning of the state
visit became apparent: Macron
appeared genuinely pleased to see
them, as did the crowds.
After they were greeted warmly by
the president and his wife Brigitte, they
inspected the guard of honour with the
president while the Queen appeared to
engage in affectionate conversation
with Macron’s wife, who greeted her
with a kiss on both cheeks. Later, at the
Élysée Palace, Brigitte briefly took the
Queen’s hand as they walked down the
steps after their meeting.
For while the bond between the King
and Macron is well chronicled, what is
less well known is the esteem in which
his wife holds the British royal family.
According to a French journalist who
once had lunch with her, the president’s
wife was a huge admirer of the late
years”. It also noted that the “royal
family is a very efficient tool of British
soft power”.
Charles was also welcomed by Le
Figaro, the right-wing daily, which said
he had not put a foot wrong since
ascending the throne and contrasted
his “rising” stature with Macron’s
waning star. It suggested that the
French president might do well to
ask Charles for strategic advice.
The paper welcomed the visit
as a new departure for Anglo-
French relations after the
“whims of Boris Johnson” and
disputes over fishing permits and
illegal immigration. It lament-
ed the postponement of the
original visit, which had
been scheduled for March
before being put back six
months because France
was convulsed by the riots
over Macron’s decision to
raise the minimum age
for a state pension. That
would have been the
first state visit of the
new reign but Charles
then went to Germany,
prompting Le Figaro
to suggest that his ar-
Queen Elizabeth II at the
state banquet in 1972
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Queen and is also a fan of the Prince
and Princess of Wales, and follows their
exploits in the French magazines.
After the inspection, the King and
president both laid a wreath at the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Charles
also placed a handwritten card saying
“In everlasting remembrance” in both
English and French.
Then, after the national anthems, the
ceremony ended with a flypast of the
Champs-Élysées by the Patrouille de
France and the Red Arrows.
At the Élysée Palace, Charles had a
private meeting with the president,
where the two men also exchanged
gifts. The King presented Macron with
an album containing photographs of
the two of them, as well as a new edition
of Voltaire’s Lettres sur les Anglais, oth-
erwise known as Lettres philosophiques,
part of a collection of the complete set
of Voltaire’s works.
In return, Macron gave the King a
golden coin from the Monnaie de Paris
featuring Charles’s portrait and a first
edition of Romain Gary’s novel Les
Racines du ciel, which won the Prix
Goncourt, France’s highest literary
award, in 1956.
Afterwards, the two heads of state
walked the brief distance to the British
ambassador’s residence in the Rue du
Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
As they started off amid tight secur-
ity the walk was a sterile business by the
standards of British royalty. The street
had been closed off, and the only on-
lookers were office workers peering
down from balconies.
But, as they neared the residence,
crowds appeared, with real enthusiasm,
shouting “Vive le Roi!”
The King pointed to them, and the
two heads of state looked at each other
and said: “Shall we say hello?” — which
they duly did.
One woman in the crowd, who shook
hands with the King and gave her name
as Sophie, from Lyons, said: “I came
here to see the King and because I think
it’s an important and memorable mo-
ment for our two countries, especially
since Brexit. For my part, it [coming
here] was in some sense also a tribute to
Queen Elizabeth.”
rival in France this week “has some-
thing of the reheated dish”.
Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre,
editor of Point de Vue, a glossy
magazine, noted that Charles and
Camilla enjoyed a “good [personal]
relationship” with Macron and his wife,
Brigitte. “They get on well,” she said. De
Clermont-Tonnerre said that Charles
had long divided public opinion in a
country that remains attached to the
memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.
“In France we sometimes still look
back at the myth of Lady Di rather than
asking ourselves who Charles really is,”
she said. Nevertheless, she said that
public opinion was shifting following
his accession, with his environmental
campaigns winning him a broad
measure of support. She said his refusal
to serve foie gras in royal residences
had raised eyebrows in the southwest,
where the delicacy is produced by
force-feeding ducks and geese, but
added: “I hope he will drink a lot of
Bordeaux to make sure he is forgiven.”
The last reigning monarch to be re-
ceived at Versailles was King Hussein of
Jordan in 1978. The last British mon-
arch to be offered a state banquet at the
palace was Queen Elizabeth II in 1972,
when foie gras and scampi were on the
menu. Georges Pompidou, the French
president of the day, committed a faux
pas by touching the Queen on the arm. The King’s visit to Paris began at the Arc de Triomphe, where he and President
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 2GM 5

News
News

welcome Charles and Camilla

After the ceremony, the heads of state drove to Versailles where guests at the state banquet included the French singer Charlotte Gainsbourg,
above left, and Sir Mick Jagger and Melanie Hamrick, his girlfriend. The Queen and Brigitte Macron, below, held talks at the Élysée Palace

Bubblegum pink outfit

gets flashbulbs popping
style employed by Paired with pearls
Hannah Rogers Queen Elizabeth to and a taupe handbag
Comment ensure that she was
easily spotted at
and pair of shoes,
Camilla’s vibrant look
ceremonial events. was a contrast to the

F
orget the gold Yesterday there was ensemble of France’s
ropes, belted certainly no doubt as première dame.
jackets and to whether you could Perhaps that was a
feathered caps pick Camilla out from given: Brigitte Macron
of the French the crowd. is known for her love
Republican Guards, Her shade of choice of skinny jeans,
yesterday it was was not red, white or trainers and sharp
Camilla’s regalia that — like France’s first blazers. She wears her
brought the most lady, Brigitte Macron nation’s native brands,
brilliance. — blue, but something too, albeit they are
That’s right. Pomp, a touch more striking: often luxury labels like
ceremony — and more bubblegum pink. Her Louis Vuitton.
often than not a head- Pepto Bismol-hued Yesterday she
turning flypast — is wool crepe coat dress welcomed the British
guaranteed on a state was the work of her monarchs in a neat
visit. But at the Élysée favourite British navy pencil skirt suit
Palace yesterday dressmaker Fiona with gold nautical
afternoon it was the Clare. It came with a buttons and black
Queen who really matching beret-style patent stilettos. The
stood out. hat from the London- jacket was cropped; the
At the King’s side on based milliner Philip skirt whip-tight and to
the couple’s first — and Treacy. He was trusted the knee.
delayed — official visit to make the headpiece It was a touch
to France, Camilla was she wore on her subdued next to
dressed head-to-toe in wedding day to Camilla, yes, but
Macron laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier one bright hue. It was a Charles, too. certainly chic.
6 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
News
Consultants paid £3,000 a shift
to cover for striking colleagues
Kat Lay Health Editor
Poppy Koronka
Consultants have been paid more than
£3,000 per shift to cover for striking
junior doctors at premium rates de-
manded by the British Medical Asso-
ciation, it emerged yesterday.
As junior doctors and consultants
walked out together for the first time,
an investigation found hospitals were
paying far more for strike cover than
they saved in wage deductions.
University Hospitals Plymouth paid
nearly £1.8 million in cover, of which
£1.59 million went to consultants, over
the first three doctor strikes, the BBC
reported.
Hull University Teaching Hospitals
Trust paid £1.7 million. A spokeswoman
said it had been forced to pay rates de-
manded by the BMA to ensure cover,
which range from £161 per hour for a
consultant during a day shift to £269
per hour overnight.
The BMA said the rates “reflect the
market value of doctors’ work”.
The dispute looks set to expand — a
third group of medics announced plans
for an indicative strike ballot.
The BMA said specialist, associate
specialist and specialty (SAS) doctors
would hold a vote to gauge the appetite
for strikes.
A cancer patient told The Times she
had been forced to attend A&E this
week after her consultant went on
strike, missing a vital appointment to
discuss abnormal blood tests.
SAS doctors hold senior posts in hos-
pitals but have not followed the tradi-
tional training routes to become GPs or
consultants. The BMA said 15,600 SAS
doctors in England had seen real-terms
pay fall by 31 per cent in the last 15 years.
Last month the union said it would
move forward with an indicative
ballot unless it received a mean-
ingful offer from ministers to
address concerns about pay,
career progression and work-
ing conditions. Dr Ujjwala
Mohite, chair of SAS
UK at the BMA, said
“the government has
left us with no
choice” by failing to
respond. She said:
“Being asked to do
more for less has
created a culture
where we feel
ignored, taken for
granted, and under-
valued.”
Consultants were
striking on Tuesday
and yesterday, and
junior doctors yes-
terday, today and to-
morrow. Both will
strike again, simultane-
ously, on October 2-5.
Junior doctors go part-time for better work-life balance
Kat Lay
One in five junior doctors are now part-
time after a leap of 56 per cent in only
three years, according to figures exclu-
sively seen by The Times.
NHS leaders warned that the trend
would inevitably mean more staff are
needed to do the same amount of work,
at a time when the health service is
struggling with workforce shortages.
The change has happened since
Health Education England (HEE),
which governs the contracts of doctors
Junior doctors and consultants went on strike yesterday, demanding their salaries be restored to the level of 2008
Kirsti Underdown, 84, has a
slow-growing cancer treated by
chemotherapy and
needs regular ap-
pointments to review
her treatment.
She was advised by
her GP to check with
a consultant on
Tuesday whether
she should go to
A&E for treatment.
Her daughter, Anita
Gibbons, said the
time of the appoint-
ment came and went
without a call.
“I rang the secre-
tary’s number and
got through to the
receptionist who
said . . . all appointments
have been cancelled for
in training, allowed “personal choice”
as a reason for part-time working. It
had previously restricted part-time
hours to doctors with specific reasons
such as ill health, caring responsibilities
or professional development.
Many health leaders consider the
move essential to improve retention by
allowing a better work-life balance to a
workforce that has experienced high
rates of burnout since the pandemic.
However, others point to the tension
between balancing individual wishes
for shorter working weeks with service
today. Your mum’s been moved to next
week.”
Gibbons took her mother to A&E.
While the treatment there was “excep-
tional” and the blood tests looked bet-
ter, she said it had been “the most
stressful day” and they were now wait-
ing for the next regular appointment.
The BMA is seeking “pay restora-
tion” to 2008 levels, calculating that
this would mean 35 per cent for junior
doctors. It has indicated it would accept
about 12 per cent for consultants.
Ministers have set out rises worth an
average 8.8 per cent for juniors and
6 per cent for consultants, insisting no
further negotiations will be held on pay.
Steve Barclay, the health secretary,
has warned the union that it could face
fines of up to £1 million if it took too
many of its doctors out on strike simul-
taneously, as part of a consultation on
NHS minimum service levels.
delivery, as the NHS seeks to bring
down a record waiting list of 7.7 million
people.
NHS Digital data on vacancies shows
that 7.2 per cent of medical posts were
vacant in June. In the academic year
2019-20, there were 8,523 doctors on
training pathways to become GPs or
consultants who worked less than full
time. By the academic year 2022-23,
this had risen to 13,312.
The part-time doctors now make up
a greater proportion of the trainee
workforce, rising from 15 per cent in
Meanwhile NHS officials have set
out plans to reduce the number of
direct hospital referrals made by GPs,
instead boosting a system known as
“advice and guidance”.
This involves a GP sending a patient’s
details to a specialist consultant who
can advise on the best course of action
before making a referral.
Theresa Barnes, outpatients’ leader
at the Royal College of Physicians, who
is working with NHS England on the
strategy, told the Health Service
Journal: “I think there should be a
push to use advice and guidance in
preference to direct referrals, so we
can maximise that pre-referral
interaction and deliver as much care as
close to patients’ homes as they can get
it and without the delay of potentially
waiting for a secondary care appoint-
ment.”
2019-20 to 20 per cent last year. Most
GPs now work part-time, on average
three days or less per week. The new
figures suggest that the trend is also
present in other specialities, and will
become more pronounced.
Danny Mortimer, chief executive of
NHS Employers, said allowing more
doctors to work part-time was “a posi-
tive step in the right direction ensuring
that the NHS keep up with the modern
age and gives doctors more flexibility,
helping create that all important work-
life balance.”
Quintagram® No 1739
Solve all five concise clues using
each letter underneath once only
1 Cooking fat (4)
----
2 Plummets (5)
-----
3 Deft (6)
------
4 Purpose, use (8)
--------
5 Misshapen (9)
---------
A A A C D D D D
E E F F I I I L
L M M N N O O O
R R R S T T U V
Solutions see T2 MindGames p15
Cryptic clues T2 MindGames p14
Tube walkouts ahead
Thousands of London
Underground workers will go on
strike on October 4 and October
6 in a long-running dispute over
station staff cuts and working
conditions, with the walkouts
timed to coincide with industrial
action on the railways, the RMT
union announced. Nationally,
members of Aslef, the train
drivers’ union, are also set to walk
out on October 4, in addition to
an overtime ban across the
rail network from October 2 to
October 6.
Manure treatment
Researchers from the University
of Sheffield have been testing the
faeces of endangered animals for
bacteria-killing viruses that could
help NHS patients to avoid
amputations. Samples taken from
animals at Yorkshire Wildlife
Park contain naturally occurring
bacteriophages, or “phages”,
which kill bacterial species —
including superbugs — that are
resistant to antibiotics and cause
diabetic foot ulcers. These
untreatable foot ulcers result in
7,000 amputations every year.
Evans given all clear
Chris Evans has said that he is
clear of skin cancer eight weeks
after his diagnosis. The Virgin
Radio presenter told listeners to
his breakfast show that he had
recieved an email from his
surgeon which was then read out
by Vassos Alexander, his co-host.
Evans, 57, said it had been “as
treatable as cancer can possibly
be” because he had caught it
early. Urging others not to put off
getting checked, he said: “Time is
your biggest weapon against it.”
Breakfast:
6am to 10am
Our free radio station has
all the latest headlines,
interviews and debates
every morning
Listen seven
days a week
On DAB, app,
website and
smart
speaker
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
Natural horn shriller Allison Clark, Ripon’s first female hornblower, sounds the “watch” in the North Yorkshire city’s market square, a daily practice since the year 886
‘Savile squad’ called in for Brand case
Sean O’Neill
Paul Morgan-Bentley
Head of Investigations
Officers from a police unit set up after
the Jimmy Savile scandal to respond to
“non-recent” sexual offences are work-
ing with Scotland Yard detectives
handling the Russell Brand allegations.
A spokesman for Operation Hydrant
confirmed that it was supporting the
Metropolitan Police after allegations of
rape, sexual assault and emotional
abuse were reported in a joint investi-
gation by The Times, The Sunday
Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches.
Four women have alleged that Brand
sexually assaulted them between 2006
and 2013, when he was a BBC and
Channel 4 presenter and then a Holly-
wood actor. Brand has denied the alle-
gations and said his relationships have
all been consensual.
Since the claims were published,
another woman has gone to the Met to
allege that she was sexually assaulted in
Soho, central London, in 2003. Brand
has not responded to requests for com-
ment about the police report.
Operation Hydrant was set up in
2014 during concern about child abuse
and sexual offences involving “persons
of public prominence”.
A spokesman for Operation Hydrant
said: “We are working with the Metro-
politan Police in support of their re-
sponse to recent allegations and would
urge any victim or survivor who feels
ready to report any allegations of
sexual assault to come forward and
speak to officers.”
The police unit has identified more
than 9,000 suspected sex offenders. Its
latest statistics classified 250 suspects,
including 58 people from the world of
television, film or radio, as public
figures. More than 1,100 people are the
subject of live investigations.
The spokesman said: “The Hydrant
2GM
Russell Brand has faced a backlash
and his live tour has been postponed
programme does not provide comment
on the status . . . of individual investiga-
tions — this is a matter for forces.”
The entertainment world has been
rocked by the allegations about Brand’s
behaviour. One woman, who is being
referred to as Nadia, alleges that Brand
raped her in Los Angeles in July 2012.
Medical notes suggest she was treated
at a rape crisis centre on the same day.
Text messages show that after leav-
ing Brand’s home, Nadia told him she
felt taken advantage of and wrote:
“When a girl say[s] NO it means no.”
Brand replied that he was “very sorry”.
Another woman, referred to as Alice,
alleges a sexual assault by Brand when
she was 16. She also claims Brand once
used his BBC account car to have her
collected from school so she could play
truant and visit him at his home.
Two other women agreed to share
their allegations of sexual assaults by
Brand, and others have accused him of
a range of allegations including physi-
cal and emotional abuse, sexual harass-
ment, predatory behaviour and bully-
ing. Since the investigation was pub-
lished, more women have come
forward to The Times and The Sunday
Times with allegations about Brand.
These claims have not been investigat-
ed and will be rigorously checked.
Investigations have been opened by
the BBC, Channel 4 and a TV company.
Serious questions have been raised
about how his most explicit and misog-
ynistic shows were broadcast. The BBC
has pulled TV and radio shows featur-
ing Brand from its catch-up services.
The BBC said its investigation would
be conducted with full transparency.
Several organisations have said they
are no longer working with Brand. His
live tour has been postponed and You-
Tube has suspended Brand’s ability to
make money on the site.
Rumble, a Toronto-based website
hosting Brand’s videos, “emphatically”
rejected a request from the Commons
culture, media and sport committee to
provide information about whether the
comedian could monetise content and
what it was doing to protect victims. It
added that it was “dangerous” that the
British parliament “would attempt to
control who is allowed to speak on our
platform or to earn a living” from it.
The Met said officers were in contact
with the woman who made the allega-
tion about an assault in 2003.
The Times and The Sunday Times
gave Brand eight days before publica-
tion to reply to the allegations.
His lawyers said the newspapers had
posed a “litany of questions”. Pressed to
provide a full response, the lawyers did
not reply. Brand said on YouTube there
were some “serious allegations that I
absolutely refute”.
Davie admits doubts over
whether BBC did enough
Alex Farber Media Correspondent
Tim Davie, the BBC director-general,
has questioned whether there should
have been more scrutiny of Russell
Brand at the corporation at a time when
Davie himself was director of audio.
Brand left his Radio 2 show in 2008 in
the wake of the scandal over his phone
call to the actor Andrew Sachs. Davie
said the BBC had carried out a
“rigorous piece of work” in its investi-
gation of the matter but admitted that
recent allegations about Brand had
prompted him to reassess its efforts.
Davie echoed fears voiced by Alex
Mahon, the Channel 4 chief executive,
that “terrible behaviour” towards
women continues to be a problem in
the TV industry.
The BBC has announced an inquiry
after a joint investigation by The Times,
The Sunday Times and Channel 4 left
Brand facing allegations of rape, sexual
assault and emotional abuse during a
seven-year period at the height of his
fame.
Brand has denied the allegations
and said that all his relationships
were consensual.
The director-general has brand-
ed Brand’s radio broadcasts from
the time “unacceptable” and the
BBC has removed a number of
programmes featuring
Brand from its catch-up
services. Davie, who was
The director-general
spoke at the Royal
Television Society
Cambridge convention
7
News
Motorist rams
dog with car
to stop attack
Tom Ball Northern Correspondent
A driver used his car to ram a mastiff-
type dog as it attacked a dog walker and
dragged him into the road.
Video showed the man being set up-
on by a large brown dog next to a busy
road in Sheffield while he held on to his
smaller pet, trying to keep it out of
reach. As the dog tried to pull him into
the road, a passing motorist mounted
the pavement and struck the animal
with the car’s bonnet.
Armed police were called to the
Handsworth area on Tuesday and
eventually managed to restrain the dog
and seize it. The man was left with seri-
ous injuries to his arm and was taken to
hospital. South Yorkshire police said
that a 53-year-old man from the city
had been arrested on suspicion of
having a dangerous dog out of control
and remained in custody.
The dog was believed to live at a near-
by property and is said to have jumped
over a wall before pouncing on the
passer-by.
Meeran Hassan, 40, who captured
the attack on his security camera, said
he had just come home from work
when he saw the incident unfold.
He said: “I’ve complained about the
dog loads of times to the police but
they’ve never done anything about it.”
Chief Inspector Emma Cheney
thanked members of the public “who
came to the aid of the victim”.
appointed director of audio weeks
before the Sachs scandal, was asked
whether he considered the 2008 in-
vestigation to have been sufficiently
thorough.
“The Sachsgate review was a rigorous
piece of work about what happened
around that editorial breach and led to
significant departures,” he said at the
Royal Television Society Cambridge
convention yesterday. “We dealt with
the huge issue that was in front of us.”
He added: “With hindsight, when
you hear about things coming out, you
ask: ‘Could you have done more? Could
you have asked more questions?’ ”
The BBC has faced criticism for
failing to investigate Brand’s behaviour.
Speaking at the convention, Lucy
Frazer, the culture secretary, said that
the Brand allegations raised wider
questions about the state of the media.
“This industry is one that young people
grow up dreaming of working in where
the sky is the limit for talent. It is
incumbent on all of us to make
sure that it is synonymous with
inclusivity and opportunity
and not scandals and MeToo,”
she said.
“TV studios, production
facilities and offices need to be
places where people
feel safe. Working
cultures must be
responsible and
accountable and
don’t allow poss-
ible abuses of
power and
everybody
feels safe.”
8 2GM Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

News
News Politics

We cannot simply spend our way

Sudden change of heart Analysis Sunak, clearly incensed, issued a

on deadlines had been

statement condemning the leak and
setting out his broad thinking. In doing
How green
C
an the UK traffic. Energy also proposing one. Some so he took the unusual step of criticising
years in the making, still hit net emits less than of those countries previous Tory governments.
Steven Swinford and
Chris Smyth report
zero if Rishi
Sunak
delays or
homes, on 17 per cent,
with gas boilers for
heating and cooking
were in New York
yesterday for the UN’s
Climate Ambition
“For too many years politicians in
governments of all stripes have not
been honest about the costs,” he said.
is our
On Monday afternoon, Mark Harper,
waters down key
policies for getting
there (Adam Vaughan
the biggest source.
Delaying or
scrapping policies
Summit, which hopes
to elicit stronger
action on cutting
“Instead they have taken the easy way
out, saying we can have it all.”
He held a virtual cabinet meeting
pleasant
the transport secretary, appeared to
suggest that the government was stick-
ing to its plan to ban the sale of new
petrol and diesel cars from 2030.
writes)?
Reaching net-zero
emissions by 2050
means Britain would
around green
transport and heating
would require faster
emissions cuts in
emissions.
The US approach to
cutting emissions has
been to focus on
yesterday morning to discuss the pro-
posals before holding a Downing Street
news conference in the afternoon.
The gap of nearly 24 hours between
land now?
He said the government wanted to in effect no longer be other sectors, said carrots rather than the leak and the formal announcement
give carmakers “regulatory certainty” contributing to Bob Ward, policy sticks, offering a allowed critics of the plans to get in first. Uniting Ford, the National Trust and
on the forced shift to electric vehicles climate change. director at the $369 billion suite of Sir Simon Clarke, a former cabinet Boris Johnson against you in a single
“in the run-up to 2030”. It means reducing London School of incentives for the minister, said the reversal of the deci- day might seem like an achievement
Those in the room — which included many sectors to zero Economics’ adoption of wind sion to implement the 2030 deadline of almost Trussian proportions
some of Britain’s biggest carmakers — emissions and Grantham Research power, electric cars would damage business. (Oliver Wright, Chris Smyth and
left with the clear impression that the counterbalancing any Institute. and more. The EU’s The Ford Motor Company took the Adam Vaughan write).
government was sticking to the ban. rump contributors — “If the government “Fit for 55” plan — a unusual step of issuing a public state- Yet Rishi Sunak has a point: the
At the weekend, however, Sunak and such as farming and goes ahead with planned 55 per cent ment castigating the delay. government is not on course to meet
his most senior aides had already decid- aviation — by delays to the phase- cut in the bloc’s E.On, the energy giant, said easing its net zero commitments and the
ed to delay the ban until 2035. They had removing greenhouse out of petrol and emissions by 2030 — the rules on gas boilers risked “con- perilous state of national and
also decided to guarantee that 20 per gases from the diesel cars and gas is a hybrid of US-like demning people to many more years of household finances makes it difficult
cent of homes would never have to re- atmosphere. boilers, it will incentives and UK- living in cold and draughty homes that to get on track, at least in the short
place gas boilers with heat pumps. The UK is almost undermine the style regulations. are too expensive to heat”. term. Across the sectors of the
The decision was taken in such secre- halfway there, cutting credibility of its Although there After the leak, the whips’ office went economy that need to decarbonise,
cy that one source said Harper had emissions by 46 per proposed pathway to have been backlashes into overdrive with many MPs being what progress has been made and
been “blindsided”. This view was re- cent between 1990 net-zero emissions by against policies to cut approached about their position. The what still needs to be done?
jected by an ally of Harper who said the and last year. By 2037 2050. This will be emissions in other row over the plans extended on to the
transport secretary knew of the plans. emissions must have most obvious through countries, such as a WhatsApp group on which Clarke cars
The reaction from some car producers fallen by 78 per cent if an increased furore in Germany posted the Ford statement. Transport is the
when the plans were leaked on Tuesday the government is to likelihood to exceed over switching homes Brendan Clarke-Smith, the Tory MP biggest single source
night, however, was one of shock. meet its “carbon the sixth carbon from boilers to heat for Bassetlaw, attacked the car com- of carbon emissions,
The root of Sunak’s decision to budgets”, the legally budget for 2033 to pumps, most polling pany. “Ford’s problem is their car sales responsible for 23 per
change the government’s plans on net binding stepping 2037,” he said. suggests high levels of have been dwindling for years,” he said. cent of the UK’s
zero lies with the Uxbridge & South stones to 2050. Michael Grubb, support for net-zero “Perhaps they saw this as an artificial greenhouse gases. Electric cars now
Ruislip by-election in July. The Tories Even the professor of energy plans. way to boost them in the short-term.” account for about 20 per cent of new
clung on to the seat by 495 votes after government’s officials, and climate change at In the UK, “the Clarke replied: “I don’t think industry sales, ahead of schedule for the old
turning it into what was in effect a refer- in more than 2,800 University College environment” was concern is limited to Ford, Brendan. deadline of 2030. But there are signs
endum on expansion of the ultra-low pages of documents London, said dropping listed in polling as the We hear a lot about facing up to trade- of trouble, with a fall in purchases by
emissions zone, an anti-pollution published in March, the 2030 fossil fuel fourth-most offs this morning. We can’t say we are private buyers. Businesses,
charge on older diesel and petrol vehi- admit that existing car deadline would be important issue facing committed to net zero by 2050 if we which can take advantage of
cles, to outer London. policies will fall short “extraordinary”, the country, behind don’t do what’s required to get there.” company car tax breaks, account for
The prime minister’s concern about of the 2037 goal. The coming a day after oil only the economy, Clarke’s comment prompted Kemi 75 per cent of all sales. Forecasts for
the pace and cost of the net zero strate- UK is expected to prices rose to $95 a health and Badenoch, the business secretary, to get the uptake of electric vehicles may
gy, however, is long-standing. He is said emit 32 million barrel. He said that immigration. Climate involved. “If there’s one thing I learned now need to be redrawn in light of
to have argued as chancellor against tonnes too much CO2 setting back efforts to change is the second- about Biz Sec, it’s that the auto industry Sunak’s announcement.
Boris Johnson’s decision to impose the between 2033 and wean transport off oil most pressing issue says lots of things in public and differ- Cost and “range anxiety” remain
2030 deadline , arguing that more time 2037. would “jeopardise” for Germans, with the ent things in private,” she said. “They key reservations and charging
was needed. “He lost the argument,” a The Climate Change the UK’s ability to energiewende, or certainly do not always speak with one infrastructure is falling behind. While
senior government source said. Committee, the prime meet its climate goals. energy transition, voice on any issue.” the UK’s charging network has
Sunak raised concerns with col- minister’s independent Looking further coming in fourth. The government is also divided. One expanded by almost one third over
leagues at the time. In March 2021 he advisers, recently ahead, in 2025 the Ukraine is top in minister said delaying the 2030 dead- the past year the rate of deployment
wrote a private letter to cabinet col- warned that their next government will Germany, polling of line was “pathetic”, adding: “The whole will need to more than double to
leagues, which has been seen by The confidence in carbon be asked by the more than 6,500 industry was going in that direction keep pace with the amount of electric
Times, warning of the “profound targets being met had Climate Change people found. In anyway. It’s amateur hour.” cars. The government wants 300,000
financial and delivery consequences” “declined markedly” Committee to approve France the The net zero announcement repre- charge points by 2030, but there are
of the interim targets for reducing in the past year. the “seventh carbon environment and sents Sunak’s first explicit move away only 44,000 in the UK and only 3,870
greenhouse gas emissions on the route So Sunak’s speech budget”, the amount climate change is the from the five pledges on the economy, were installed in the three months to
to 2050. “There are currently 22 million yesterday came the UK can legally second-most small boats and NHS waiting lists that July. The most recent regional figures
houses with fossil fuel heating, and 32 against an already emit between 2038 important concern, have defined his premiership. show huge regional variations. At the
million cars on our roads,” he wrote. challenging backdrop. and 2042. For the first ahead of poverty. While he claimed in his news confer- end of last year there were 11 cars to
“These cannot be replaced overnight.” Two of the policies he time, it is anticipated Professor Lorraine ence that his new net zero position was each public charger in London,
Sunak added that the government is delaying — the the budget will Whitmarsh at the “not about politics”, those around him compared with 85 to one in the
needed to be “crystal clear” in its ambi- 2030 ban on new require some sectors University of Bath believe there is the potential to open a northwest of England, the worst-
tions. He said that under the govern- petrol and diesel car not only to cut their conducted polling clear dividing line with Labour. served area. The Climate Change
ment’s plans households would face sales and the 2035 ban emissions but to reach with Ipsos Mori which The decision also carries political Committee says that slow progress
annual costs of between £330 and £670 on new gas boiler negative emissions — found that British risk. Johnson told Sunak the govern- on chargers will be a “serious risk” to
from 2033 to 2037. sales — are by removing CO2 people still broadly ment could not “afford to falter” on net the electric transition.
“Analysis . . . is clear that delivery will particularly important from the atmosphere, supported most net- zero, while polling suggests voters back
mean regulating homeowners and because of how large such as by tree zero measures. She the 2050 target but are split on the ways home heating
landlords on the efficiency and heating emissions from planting. So decisions said: “The public are to get there. Sunak, however, believes it Buildings are the UK’s
of their homes, at the point of sale and transport and for future prime worried about climate is a risk worth taking. second highest-
during their time in residence; chang- buildings have ministers will get change and want the Asked how he would defend the emitting carbon
ing the types of vehicles that can be become. harder, not easier. government to take change to his daughters, who he says sector, accounting for
sold; and making polluters pay, even Energy used to be The UK is far from more action on it; but press him on environmental issues, 17 per cent of total
where those firms and industries are the UK’s biggest alone in aiming for do see cost barriers. Sunak said: “I have no problem what- emissions, and experts have warned
important to our economy.” emitter. But that has net zero. A total of 27 But this doesn’t mean soever defending it, not just to my that the UK is not on track to hit the
He warned of an “unavoidable” in- gone green, and is nations have a net- the public won’t daughters — it’s not them that’s going target of reducing emissions by 43
crease in energy costs in the short term. now dwarfed by zero target in law support net-zero to have to fork out £10,000. It’s families per cent between last year and 2035.
“Moving forward, government can- transport at 34 per with a further 51 measures — rather up and down the country.” The first problem is that Britain is
not simply spend its way to net zero,” cent of emissions, having it as policy and that they will if they not installing the number of heat
Sunak said. “That is not only because it most of which is road scores more are affordable.” pumps needed to replace existing gas
is unaffordable for current and future boilers. Last year 72,000 new heat
taxpayers but also because spending is pumps were installed against a target
not the most effective way to reduce cost — how much am I going to have to ernment must bring people with it or of 130,000. Britain has the lowest rate
emissions.” spend on this? He doesn’t see it as an lose the argument. TIMES in Europe for heat pump installation.
Others say Sunak’s scepticism re- opportunity to take the lead in the in- The prime minister had been intend- EARTH While the government has
flects a personal ambivalence. “He dustries of the future.” ing to announce the change in his posi- announced a boiler upgrade scheme
doesn’t get the economic argument,” a This is rejected by Sunak’s allies, who tion on net zero tomorrow but a leak of covering some of the cost of a heat
person who has worked with him on the say that while he is “doubling down” on the plans on Tuesday evening to the pump, the scheme is bureaucratic and
issue said. “He just sees net zero as a the commitment to net zero, the gov- BBC forced him to bring them forward.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
to hitting net zero, insists Sunak
Rishi Sunak was forced to bring his announcement of the plans forward after they leaked to the media. Allies say he remains committed to Britain’s net zero goal
there is a shortage of skilled workers
to fit them. Planning rules also limit
the number of properties eligible.
The installation of a heat pump
system in flats can be problematic as
it requires outside space.
Heat pumps are also expensive,
costing up to £15,000 including
installation. However, prices are
falling and Sunak’s increased £7,500
grant is a significant contribution.
The energy supplier Octopus claims
its new heat pumps could, with the
subsidy, cost no more than £1,500.
The government had been
proposing a ban on letting properties
with EPC ratings below C by 2028,
however, these plans have been
scrapped. The average home has a D
rating — the average cost of getting it
up to a C is roughly £14,000.
electricity supply
The transition to net
zero can be achieved
only if the UK has a
sufficient and reliable
supply of green energy
to meet the increased demand of
decarbonisation. Ministers have been
warned that they are not on track to
meet this demand. For example,
existing plans call for up to 50
gigawatts of offshore wind generation
to be deployed by 2030 — four times
current levels — and 70 gigawatts of
solar by 2035.
Last year only 2.7 gigawatts of
offshore wind came on stream,
2GM
almost half the annual amount
needed to meet the goal. This month
not a single company came forward
to bid in the government’s latest
round of auctions to supply offshore
wind power to the energy grid
because they considered the price
being offered too low to cover their
increased costs. Senior energy
industry figures think the 2030
offshore wind target will be missed
but only narrowly, with about 45 to
50 gigawatts achieved.
The government recently eased
rules that had in effect banned the
construction of new onshore wind
farms in England. Only two new
turbines were built in England last
year, according to the trade body
RenewableUK, due to a rule which
meant that onshore turbines could be
blocked if there was a single local
objection. However, critics say the
new rules will not do enough to
encourage developers to bring
forward new projects.
There are also delays and barriers
in the planning system needed to
bring new renewable energy to the
grid. A recent report warned of a
long-standing backlog of projects that
had yet to be addressed. There are
concerns that this will leave green
generating capacity lying idle because
it cannot be connected to consumers.
There is also huge uncertainty
around the government’s pledge to
deliver 24 gigawatts of new nuclear
“baseload” power needed to
decarbonise electricity. While
ministers have now approved the
Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk, it
is unlikely to be operational before
2031 at the earliest. There is further
uncertainty about plans for a series of
untested small modular nuclear
reactors.
heavy industry
Despite Britain’s shift
at the end of the last
century away from
manufacturing
towards the service
sector, UK industry is still responsible
for about 12 per cent of emissions.
Most of that comes from iron, steel
and chemicals companies, which is
one reason why Labour has focused
some of its climate promises on
greening the steel industry.
Vital to cleaning up heavy industry
will be the success of carbon capture
and storage technology, which will
trap emissions and store it away in
sites such as old oil and gas reservoirs
under the North Sea, but there is still
a long way to go. The target is 20 to
30 million tonnes of carbon to be
captured and stored each year by
2030. Today the figure is zero.
lifestyle changes
There are a number of
other areas where
climate change experts
have suggested that
progress is slow and
needs to be addressed. In 2019 the
head of the Climate Change
Committee suggested that flying was
“very skewed” to a small number of
people, pointing out that about half
of people in the UK do not fly in any
given year but a minority fly often.
Flights are responsible for only
7 per cent of emissions, but it is
perhaps the most difficult area to
decarbonise.
On current trends, the number of
flights taken in the UK is due to rise
by 50 per cent by 2050, but the
committee advised this must be
halved to a 25 per cent increase to
stay within net-zero target.
This has led to suggestions that the
government could introduce a
“frequent flyer levy” — something
that Sunak has ruled out alongside
other new taxes to discourage flying.
Likewise the Climate Change
Committee last year recommended a
20 per cent reduction in meat and
dairy consumption by 2030 —
something Sunak has vetoed.
Sunak has also killed off a scheme
in which all local authorities would
be required to individually collect
paper, cardboard, metal, plastic and
glass as well as garden and food
waste. Councils claimed the move
was “unworkable” and could require
up to seven individual bins.
Likewise he said he would never
allow councils to enforce car sharing
in an effort to reduce pollution and
lower traffic levels.
9
News
News
Wavering
voters not
for turning,
says poll
Oliver Wright Policy Editor
Rishi Sunak’s new net-zero plan
is unlikely to win back many
wavering Conservative voters, polling
and focus groups seen in Downing
Street before the prime minister’s an-
nouncement suggest.
The survey of more than 4,000
people and interviews with voters in
swing constituencies found that more
than half of Tory 2019 voters (53 per
cent) thought spending more on
renewable energy would bring down
the cost of living, with only 26 per cent
disagreeing.
The poll also found that, overwhelm-
ingly, voters did not blame green com-
mitments for the cost of living squeeze
and favoured government support for
households over the diluting of envi-
ronmental commitments.
However, separate snap polling
carried out by YouGov suggested that
Sunak’s plans to water down the ban on
new gas boilers and petrol and diesel
cars were popular with current sup-
porters of the party. Seventy per cent
supported the move to delay the ban on
the sale of new petrol and diesel cars
from 2030 to 2035, while 60 per cent
backed moves to scale back the 2035
boiler ban.
Yet the polling also showed the
potential jeopardy in Sunak’s new posi-
tion. About a third of Tory supporters
felt the government was not doing
enough to meet the UK’s 2050 net-zero
target — which is backed by a majority
of the party’s voters.
The more in-depth polling, which
was carried out by the policy research
firm Public First and is understood to
have been shared with senior figures in
No 10, also found support for relaxing
the boiler ban. However, it suggested
any perception that Sunak was moving
away from the Conservatives’ broader
green and net-zero agenda could cost
the party votes at the next election. It
found that the cost of net zero was not
an issue that exercised voters or one
they blamed for the cost of living crisis.
More than 70 per cent thought that
investing in green home energy meas-
ures would save them money in the
long term, while 39 per cent backed the
government doing more to help fami-
lies with the upfront costs of moving to
a green economy.
Among those who had moved away
from the Tories since 2019 or who were
still intending to vote for them at the
next election, a majority believed that
the UK should aim to reach net zero by
2050, while only a very small propor-
tion (15 per cent) would support drop-
ping the target outright.
Getting rid of the net-zero target was
deeply unpopular with wavering 2019
Conservative voters. Twenty-two per
cent said they would be more likely to
vote for a party that dropped the net-
zero pledge, but 39 per cent would be
less likely to vote for such a party.
Previous polling by YouGov has
found that while the public are commit-
ted to net zero they are much less keen
on the related financial outlay, with
about 45 per cent saying they were not
considering switching their gas boiler
for a heat pump in the next few years.
10
News
Back of the net It takes skill to climb elegantly from a car in extreme heels, never mind an extravagantly netted dress.
Thankfully Caprice, the American model, has had plenty of practice. She was attending The Sun’s Who Cares Wins Awards
Clearing places for most students ever
Nicola Woolcock
A record number of students have
secured a place at university or college
through clearing.
In the 28 days since A-level results
were published, more than 38,000
teenagers have found courses through
the clearing system, figures released to-
day show. This is almost 15 per cent
more than the 33,280 last year, when
exams were reintroduced, and more
than the 33,000 who went through
clearing in 2019, the last year in which
the tests were taken before Covid-19.
The figures include candidates who
turned down their first choice univers-
ity to seek something else through
clearing, usually because they had
achieved better results than expected.
The system used to be regarded as a
last-ditch measure for those who had
missed the grades to get on to their cho-
sen course. The admissions service
Ucas said more school-leavers were us-
ing clearing to secure a new choice of
university or college after freeing them-
selves from a previous commitment.
This year 16,040 18-year-olds took
this route compared with 14,760 last
year and 12,170 in 2019. In total, 67,990
students have found a place using clear-
ing, of whom 32 per cent declined their
first choice and 30 per cent found a
place after not meeting the terms of
their offer and being released into
clearing on results day.
The remainder either applied direct-
ly into clearing or held no firm choice.
Overall, 270,350 students have been ac-
cepted on a course, down from 275,390
last year and up from 239,460 in 2019.
This year, 31,090 students came from
the most disadvantaged backgrounds,
down slightly from the previous year
but up from 2019. In total, 50,860 inter-
national students from outside the EU
have been accepted — compared with
51,290 last year and 40,720 in 2019.
The countries from which most ap-
plicants were accepted were China —
with 15,180 this year, down from 16,720
last year — and India — with 4,960, up
from 4,400. The number of EU stu-
dents this year was 10,610, down from
10,910 last year and 30,040 in 2019.
Sander Kristel, interim chief execu-
tive at Ucas, said clearing was widely
seen as being for students who “didn’t
meet their offer”. He added: “This
couldn’t be further from the truth. To-
day’s numbers show the continuing at-
traction of UK higher education across
the globe and a return to normal
growth following the surge of demand
during the pandemic.”
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Parents decide
missing school
is socially OK
Nicola Woolcock Education Editor
Parents no longer believe that school is
necessary every day as teacher strikes
and the pandemic have caused a “seis-
mic shift” in attitudes, a study suggests.
Significant numbers are taking their
children on holiday during term and
see such breaks as socially acceptable.
There are concerns about the num-
ber of children missing school in En-
gland — particularly those who do so
persistently — with the head of Ofsted
saying that the social contract between
schools and families has been broken.
Changing parental attitudes back
will take a “monumental” effort, ac-
cording to the study by the consultancy
Public First. It highlights findings from
focus groups with parents and con-
cludes: “Pre-Covid, ensuring your
child’s daily attendance at school was
seen as a fundamental element of good
parenting. Post-Covid, parents no
longer felt that to be the case, and in-
stead view attending school as one of
several — often competing — options
or demands on their child on a daily
basis, against a backdrop of a more
holistic approach to daily life.”
An increase in mental health prob-
lems and the cost of living crisis are
contributing to higher absence, the re-
port says, but the study found no evi-
dence to suggest that the rise in parents
working from home had encouraged
more children to stay off school.
Researchers conducted eight online
focus groups with parents of school-age
children in locations across England in
June and July this year. Research for the
charity School-Home Support (SHS)
and a small number of pupil focus
groups for the charity Khulisa also fed
into the study.
Faith, 31, a mother of four from
London who was helped by SHS, told
The Times she had struggled to get her
oldest, now ten, to school as he was ex-
tremely clingy after lockdown. On days
when he did attend, she would some-
times end up waiting in the car outside
as the school would often ring to say
there had been incidents.
After receiving help from the school
and the charity, she managed to estab-
lish a routine and he is now settled.
Faith, is now an advocate for SHS.
The Public First research found,
however, that other families no longer
believed 100 per cent attendance was
necessary.
“Parents agreed that every school
day could not possibly be that impor-
tant, given that so much time had been
lost to lockdowns and strikes,” it said.
“Moreover, there was a sense from
parents that other elements of their
lives were just as important as attend-
ing school, if not more so.”
A mother of two primary age child-
ren from Manchester said: “Pre-Covid,
I was very much about getting the kids
into school. After Covid my take on at-
tendance and absence now is I don’t
really care any more. Life’s too short.”
Another parent, the mother of a 15-
year-old from Bristol, said: “We always
took them skiing in February half term
to try and comply. Now I look back and
I think, why didn’t I just take them out
for a cheap week in January?”
More than 22 per cent of pupils in
England were “persistently absent” —
missing at least 10 per cent of school
sessions — in the 2022-23 academic
year. The rate was 10.9 per cent in 2018-
19, before the pandemic.
The report calls for fines for school
absences to be reviewed and “potent-
ially abolished” as it suggests they are
not working and adds that further in-
vestment in special educational needs
and disabilities and child and adoles-
cent mental health services “will signif-
icantly improve attendance”.
A Department for Education spokes-
woman said regular attendance was
vital for children’s education and that it
had expanded attendance hubs and
provided help for schools on communi-
cating with parents.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 11

News

Bianca Williams,
second from right,
won a gold medal
at the European
Championships in
2018. She and her
partner were
handcuffed and
had their car
searched by Met
officers in 2020

and detained them, the
Police ‘lied over tribunal was told. The
couple’s Mercedes was
searched for drugs and
search of athletes’ weapons but nothing
was found.
Acting Police
representing the
director-general of the
Independent Office for
Police Conduct (IOPC),
said: “The director-
general will say that the
detention of Mr dos
Metropolitan Police
force”.
Williams won gold in
the 4x100m relay at the
2018 European and
Commonwealth Games
while dos Santos, a
been made of Mercedes alleged to have breached
A-class cars linked to
drugs or gangs. The
officers rejected claims
standards on equality
and diversity during the
stop and search.
that their actions were
based on discrimination.
Simpson, Clapham,
Bond and Franks also
Monaghan said that face allegations that

T
wo athletes
were stopped,
searched and
handcuffed in
front of their
baby during a
confrontation with
Metropolitan Police
officers “because they
are black”, a misconduct
hearing has been told
(David Woode writes).
Bianca Williams, 29,
and her partner, Ricardo
dos Santos, 28, say that
they were racially
profiled by “aggressive”
officers as they drove
through Maida Vale,
northwest London, on
July 4, 2020, with their
three-month-old son in
the car.
Five officers from the
Met’s territorial support
group “lied” about
smelling cannabis when
they stopped the vehicle
Sergeant Rachel
Simpson, PC Allan
Casey, PC Jonathan
Clapham, PC Michael
Bond and PC Sam
Franks are accused of
gross misconduct, which
they deny. The officers
face dismissal if the
allegations are proven.
Speaking at the
opening of the case
yesterday, Karon
Monaghan KC,
Santos and Ms Williams
for 45 minutes, on the
road, in full view of their
neighbours, was because
they were black.
“But in any event, it
was excessive,
unreasonable and
unjustified.”
She added that the
IOPC’s case would state
that there was
“institutional
discrimination in the
Portuguese 400m
runner, competed at the
Tokyo 2020 Olympic
Games.
Both rejected any
suggestion that they
would use cannabis, as
doing so would end their
sponsorship deals.
The panel was told
that gang members
favoured cars with
tinted windows and that
a number of reports had
dos Santos “considers
that the police view it as
suspicious for him, a
young black man, to be
driving such a car,
thinking that he must be
a drug dealer or have
access to illegal finance”.
The panel was told that
dos Santos had been
stopped and searched by
police since he was a
teenager.
All five officers are
their actions amounted
to a breach of
professional behaviour
standards in relation to
the use of force. They
are said to have failed in
relation to their levels of
authority, respect and
courtesy as well as in
their duties and
responsibilities. The
officers deny the
charges. The hearing
continues today.

Firearms officer charged with murder

David Woode Crime Correspondent
A Metropolitan Police officer has been
charged with murder after an unarmed
man was fatally shot in south London.
The firearms officer, who has not
been named and is known only as
NX121, remains suspended from duty.
His identity has not been revealed for
legal reasons.
Chris Kaba, 24, was struck in the head
by a single gunshot following “a pur-
suit” in Kirkstall Gardens, Streatham
Hill, shortly after 10pm on Sep-
tember 5, last year. He died
in hospital. A post-
mortem examination
gave a provisional
cause of death as a
gunshot wound to
the head.
The Independ-
ent Office for
Police Conduct
(IOPC) began an
investigation days
after the killing and in
March investigators
passed a file of evidence to
prosecutors. The Crown Prosecution
Service (CPS) said yesterday, more
than one year after Kaba’s death, that it
had authorised a charge of murder
against the officer.
Rosemary Ainslie, head of the CPS
special crime division, said: “Mr Kaba
died on September 6, 2022, after he was
struck by a single bullet in Streatham
Hill, south London.
“The CPS reminds all concerned that
criminal proceedings against the offi-
cer are active and that he has the right
to a fair trial. It is extremely im-
portant there should be no
reporting, commentary or
sharing of information
online which could in
any way prejudice
these proceedings.”
The officer will
appear at Westmin-
ster magistrates’
court in central
London today. Kaba’s
family welcomed the
charge and said they
hoped “justice will be
served”. In a statement,
Protesters in London this month to mark a year since the death of Chris Kaba, left
which was issued through the charity
Inquest, Kaba’s relatives said: “Chris
was so very loved by our family and all
his friends. He had a bright future
ahead of him, but his life was cut short.
Now we await the trial of the firearms
officer without delay.” Daniel Macho-
ver, a solicitor and partner at Hickman
and Rose, which represents the family,
said: “Over the past year, Chris’s family
have shown extraordinary dignity and
strength as they have demanded an-
swers about how Chris was killed,
and sought justice and accountability
for him.”
Scotland Yard described the charg-
ing decision as a “significant and seri-
ous development”. Helen Millichap,
a deputy assistant commissioner,
said: “We have fully supported the
IOPC investigation as it has worked to
establish the facts.
“We must now allow the court pro-
cess to run its course so it would not be
appropriate for me to say more at this
stage. Our thoughts are with everyone
affected by this case.” The force said
misconduct matters against the officer
“will be considered at the conclusion of
the criminal proceedings”.
Kaba’s killing prompted protests in
central London on consecutive week-
ends last September. Thousands of
people demonstrated outside the Met’s
headquarters in Westminster.
Since 1990, 80 people have been
fatally shot by the police in England
and Wales, according to Inquest. Dur-
ing the same period there have been
1,871 deaths recorded in or following
police custody or contact.
12
News
UK more liberal — except on trans issues
Charlie Parker
Britain has become more liberal
towards sexual relationships, non-tra-
ditional families and abortion but less
tolerant of transgender issues, accord-
ing to a report.
Data published by the National
Centre for Social Research (NatCen),
which has tracked public opinion in the
UK for decades, shows that views on
cultural and moral issues have under-
gone “profound” change and rendered
the country unrecognisable from a
generation ago. In the 40th annual
British Social Attitudes (BSA) report, a
survey of social and political sentiment,
the centre found that the population is
now “markedly more liberal”.
In 1989, 70 per cent of respondents
said that people who wanted children
should get married. Only 24 per cent
express that view today, and the re-
searchers said that most of the change
had happened in the last ten years.
There has been a smaller, but still sig-
nificant, shift in perceptions of family
structures. Half of those surveyed said
that one parent could bring up a child
as well as two parents could, compared
with 35 per cent who agreed in 1994.
Support for non-traditional families,
such as single-parent households and
co-habiting families, is greater among
younger age groups than older age
groups. The increase in support for
co-habitation has mostly been the re-
sult of generational change as younger
Britons are more tolerant towards
modern family structures.
Positions on gender roles have also
changed significantly. Only 9 per cent
of people now agree that “a man’s job is
to earn money, a woman’s job is to look
after the family”, compared with nearly
half of respondents in 1987.
Asked in 1984 who in a mixed-sex
couple should do the washing and
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
ironing, three quarters of respondents
said mainly the woman. Only 22 per
cent thought the task should be shared
equally. Now 76 per cent say the task
should be shared, against 16 per cent
who still believe it is the woman’s job.
Researchers recorded shifts around
same-sex relationships as well. In 1983,
50 per cent of respondents agreed that
sex between adults of the same gender
was “always wrong”, compared with
9 per cent today. In 1983, 42 per cent
said that pre-marital sex was “not
wrong at all” against 78 per cent now.
Attitudes towards abortion have also
become more progressive. Seventy-six
per cent of respondents now believe the
law show allow abortion if a woman
decides on her own that she does not
want to continue the pregnancy. Only
37 per cent held this view in 1983.
The proportion of people holding
Taking the floor Stacey Alleaume and David Junghoon Kim in a dress rehearsal
for Welsh National Opera’s production of La traviata, opening tonight in Cardiff
‘Zach’s Law’ to tackle web
trolls who trigger seizures
Mark Sellman
Technology Correspondent
A 12-year-old boy abused by online
trolls because of his epilepsy is “over the
moon” after his campaign created a
criminal offence to protect other
sufferers.
Zach Eagling, who was diagnosed
with cerebral palsy after a brain injury
at birth and has epilepsy, was trolled
after he undertook a charity challenge.
He completed a 1.6 mile walk
unaided in the summer of
2020, raising £20,000 for
the Epilepsy Society.
At the same time, the
society’s social media
pages were targeted with
flashing images in an at-
tempt to cause seizures
among the charity’s followers,
including Zach. The society
said that many seizures were re-
ported but nothing could be
done because those who posted
the messages were not breaking
the law. Following a campaign by
liberal positions on transgender issues
has fallen, however. Only 30 per cent of
those surveyed said that a trans person
should be permitted to change the sex
on their birth certificate if they wanted
to, a fall from 53 per cent in 2019. Over
the same period the proportion of
people who characterise themselves as
“not at all prejudiced” against people
who are transgender has fallen from
82 per cent to 64 per cent since 2019.
Gillian Prior, deputy chief executive
at NatCen, said the recent public debate
about the law on gender recognition
“has appeared to have resulted in atti-
tudes becoming less liberal than they
were just a few short years ago”.
The BSA 2022 survey consisted of
6,638 interviews with a representative,
random sample of adults in Britain and
was conducted between September 7
and October 30, 2022.
Zach, the loophole has been closed by
the Online Safety Bill, which makes the
posting of flashing images with mali-
cious intent a crime that carries a five-
year jail sentence. The bill passed
through parliament on Tuesday and will
go for royal assent next month. Zach’s
Law, as it has been called, is thought to be
the first in the world specifically to safe-
guard people with epilepsy.
Claire Keer, Zach’s mother, said: “I’m
so proud of Zach and his achievements.
When we started our campaign, I’m
not sure that either of us thought it
would go this far. Zach was deeply
upset at the online trolling and was
determined to make it stop.
He’s done that now and he’s
over the moon about it. All
Zach ever wants to do is
help people.”
Clare Pelham, chief
executive of the Epi-
lepsy Society, said:
“This is an historic day.”
Zach Eagling with his
mother, Claire Keer
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
Radio station boss ‘was kidnapped,
tortured and killed by drugs gang’
David Brown
The owner of a Turkish radio station
was kidnapped, tortured and murdered
after he was trailed from a Mayfair res-
taurant, a court was told yesterday.
Koray Alpergin and his girlfriend
were bundled into a van outside his
apartment in Enfield, north London,
before being taken to a wine bar in
Tottenham where he was eventually
killed in October last year.
The 43-year-old radio boss and DJ
owned Bizim FM, a Turkish-language
station based in London. The Old Bai-
ley was told that he appeared to have
fallen foul of an organised crime group.
A tracking device was concealed
under his Audi car so the gang could
follow Alpergin. The DJ enjoyed a
celebrity lifestyle, being photographed
with the rapper Sean Combs, better
known as P Diddy, and Salt Bae, the
Turkish chef and restaurateur.
Alpergin was tracked as he returned
home from the Novikov restaurant in
Mayfair, central London, with Gozde
Dalbudak, his girlfriend. The couple
were outside his flat when they were
bundled into a convoy of three vehicles
and taken to a wine bar where Alpergin
was “stripped naked and horrifically
tortured”, the court was told.
Crispin Aylett, KC, for the prosecu-
tion, said the DJ was not kidnapped so
that someone might pay a ransom for
his release. “Instead, he was to be tor-
tured either as a punishment for some-
thing that he had done or else for what
he knew,” Aylett said.
Dalbudak, 34, was kept in a lavatory
at the Stadium Lounge wine bar in Tot-
tenham, north London, before being
released two days later.
The court was told Alpergin’s body
was first taken to a fruit and vegetable
wholesaler’s premises on the Triumph
Trading Estate in Tottenham before it
was driven to Loughton, in Epping
Forest, Essex. It was found in woodland.
A post-mortem examination identi-
fied 94 visible injuries, including bruis-
ing, suggesting he was beaten with a
baseball bat and boiling water was
poured over him.
The soles of both feet were stabbed,
while his genitals and anus were in-
jured. Neck marks showed he was
strangled with a ligature.
Aylett told the jury: “It is not hard to
envisage a group of sadistic thugs
taking it in turns to inflict injury . . .
“The only mercy — if mercy it be —
was that the pathologist considers that
Koray Alpergin could not have sur-
Suicide of solicitor who would not charge the poor
Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondent
A solicitor who worked on cases free of
charge for struggling clients killed him-
self after his low fees contributed to
spiralling financial problems.
Marcus Malin, 48, took his own life
after fines, including parking tickets,
amounted to thousands of pounds of
debt and bailiffs came knocking.
An inquest was told that the solicitor
was well loved by his clients and often
conducted cases free, particularly if
they involved children, to help those
without the means to pay.
Winchester coroner’s court was told
that Malin had ended up in financial
difficulties and had been due to be in-
vestigated by the Solicitors Regulation
Authority. He was found dead in his car
vived these terrible injuries for very
long and certainly not for more than a
few hours.”
The court was told Alpergin had
confided in a friend that during a visit to
Turkey “he had said the wrong thing to
the wrong people and they wanted to
question him about it”.
Aylett said: “It shows that Mr Alper-
gin was kidnapped so that he might
either be punished for having upset
someone or else be tortured for what he
knew, or both.
“This crime bears all the hallmarks of
near West Tytherley, Hampshire, on
December 9, about ten miles from his
home in Salisbury. A post-mortem ex-
amination found that he had died of
carbon monoxide poisoning.
The hearing was told that the solici-
tor had left a note on his phone reading:
“I have got myself into a mess being that
I charged so very little. I would charge
a few hundred pounds, if anything. I did
so to help people.”
Michael Malin, his father, told the
court that his son had been popular. He
said: “He was an individual who was
always bright and happy on the outside
but his mother and myself used to say
we didn’t know him.”
Malin said: “I think Marcus was par-
ticularly soft and he would go for cases
where children were involved and he
didn’t have much money because he
being linked to serious, organised
crime, almost certainly drugs. Koray
Alpergin was kidnapped and tortured
either so that he might be punished for
something that he had done or else
forced to give up something that he
knew, perhaps, the whereabouts of
either drugs or money.”
Tejean Kennedy, 33, Samuel Owusu-
Opoku, 35, Junior Kettle, 32, and Ali
Kavak, 26, deny murdering Alpergin
and the kidnap and false imprisonment
of the businessman and Dalbudak.
Steffan Gordon, 34, has admitted
was doing things for people that
couldn’t afford a lot.
“He had financial problems because
he did things for free and he got to the
stage of failing to pay parking fines.”
Malin said his son’s debt amounted to
thousands of pounds.
The solicitor was self-employed but
worked under the umbrella of a law
firm, which meant he could choose
cases himself.
Before his death, Malin was contact-
ed on an unknown matter by the SRA
— the regulatory body for solicitors in
England and Wales — which meant he
might have been investigated.
His father told the inquest: “Our
thought is that the SRA probably con-
tacted Marcus before his death and he
knew it would end with him in a lot of
trouble because solicitors aren’t al-
Koray Alpergin led a celebrity lifestyle
and had been pictured with the rapper
Sean Combs. He and his girlfriend,
Gozde Dalbudak, were abducted
outside his flat in north London
after his car was tracked from a
restaurant in central London
kidnap but denies murder and false im-
prisonment. Kavak and Erdogan Ulcay,
56, who owned the fruit and vegetable
wholesalers, deny perverting the
course of justice by disposing of the
body or vehicles.
Owusu-Opoku and Yigit Hurman,
18, have admitted this charge.
The court was told that other alleged
members of the gang, Ali Yildrim, 28,
and Cem Orman, 24, have “fled over-
seas”, while two others have not been
identified.
The case continues.
lowed to have county court convic-
tions. We always talked openly about
things but there was this side to him
where he didn’t tell us everything.”
His father said that after Malin’s
death the family had about ten letters
following county court judgments
against him.
The court was told that Malin, who
lived with his parents at the time, had
bailiffs coming to the door so frequently
that they were fed up with it.
Jason Pegg, area coroner for Hamp-
shire, concluded that death was by sui-
cide due to financial problems. “Marcus
would put others first, probably trying
to help those who had little money in
times of desperation.”
The coroner said Malin was “bright
and happy” but that his finances got on
top of him.
13
News
Mother died
in Turkish
weight-loss
operation
The death of a mother of two after
weight-loss surgery in Turkey has
prompted a coroner to criticise the
health tourism company involved.
Emma Morrissey, 44, died two days
after a surgeon accidentally punctured
her abdomen. The private hospital tried
to claim she had died of natural causes
and not the “massive bleed” that killed
her, the coroner said.
It has emerged that the company,
Regenesis Health Travel, had not
checked Morrissey was fit for the oper-
ation.
Jacqueline Devonish, the senior cor-
oner for Cheshire, has written to the
company to express her concerns.
In July last year Morrissey travelled
to Termessos Hospital in Antalya to
have gastric sleeve surgery more
cheaply than in the UK, where she did
not meet the criteria to have it on
the NHS, Cheshire coroner’s court
was told.
During her operation, the surgeon
perforated her abdomen with an instru-
ment and she suffered from internal
bleeding, which led to her death two
days later on July 8.
In a report following a narrative ver-
dict, Devonish revealed that “matters
giving rise to concern” had been heard
at the inquest, concerning the lack of
preparation by the travel company.
“Regenesis UK relied upon patient
self-declaration of health and made no
independent inquiries to satisfy them-
selves that Emma was fit for the pro-
cedure before making the arrangement
for her to have surgery,” she wrote.
“The series of health-related
pre-assessment questions asked before
referral to the private hospital in
Turkey were unclear. The questions did
not include an inquiry about family his-
tory of medical conditions such as car-
diac-related relevant to Emma.”
Devonish was also critical of the
Emma Morrissey,
44, did not meet
criteria to have the
surgery on the NHS
Turkish authorities. “There has been
no evidence of an investigation into the
operating table death by the ministry of
health in Turkey, the private Termessos
Hospital or Regenesis UK,” she wrote.
“The embalming process for repatri-
ation from Turkey to the UK was inade-
quate, leaving Emma’s body at risk of
infection during transit. This presented
a risk of decomposition as well as a
health risk to the professionals receiv-
ing her body in the UK.
“The cause of death reported in
Turkey was natural. In the circumstan-
ces of a massive bleed in the abdomen
following the introduction of the in-
strument, the death is . . . unnatural.”
Addressing Regenesis, she conclud-
ed: “Action should be taken to prevent
future deaths and I believe you have the
power to take such action.” The firm is
under a duty to respond by October 30.
Regenesis claims to offer “quality
healthcare at affordable costs to a
broader segment of people and to ex-
tend quality care beyond national
boundaries through medical tourism”.
Last week a coroner in Norfolk
warned of the dangers of travelling
abroad for cosmetic procedures after
hearing how Melissa Kerr, 31, died
following buttock-enlargement sur-
gery in Turkey.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 2GM 15

News
Christopher Robin and
his friends, set after
Pooh’s newest pal, Winnie-the-Pooh and
The House at Pooh
Corner.
the lifesaver dog Riordan is the author
of the prequel Once
There Was a Bear, as
well as Winnie-the-Pooh

P
ooh, Piglet and
Eeyore have a
new friend.
Almost 70 years
after the death
of the author AA Milne,
a new animal will join
his much-loved
characters in Hundred
Acre Wood (Lucy
Bannerman writes).
A dog named Carmen
will make her debut in
Winnie-the-Pooh: Tales
from the Forest, a sequel
to be published this
month.
The character is
inspired by the tiny
stuffed toy Milne took
with him to the trenches
in the First World War. It
was a lucky mascot that
he later joked had saved
him from the Somme.
Jane Riordan, who
wrote the book, was
inspired to introduce
Carmen after reading an
article from the Sunday
Express in 1966 in which
Milne’s wife, Daphne,
spoke about the toy.
Daphne Milne said:
“My husband took a toy
mascot, a dog called
Carmen, to look after
him in the First World
War. He was saved from Meets the Queen and the
the Somme by trench recent Winnie-the-Pooh
fever. He wrote to say Meets the King.
that Carmen had found a The new stories will be
French germ in the illustrated by Mark
trench and blown it on to Burgess in the style of
him. Four years after EH Shepard’s original
that Christopher Robin drawings. Burgess
was born.” illustrated the authorised
Alan Alexander Milne prequel Once There Was
married Daphne 1913, a Bear, Return to the
and in 1915, despite being Hundred Acre Wood and
a pacifist, he joined the The Best Bear in All the
army as a signalling World.
officer. He served briefly Cally Poplak,
in France, but he became executive publisher at
ill and was sent home. Farshore, which is part
He was discharged in of HarperCollins, said:
1919. He died at his home “Pooh and friends are as
in Sussex, in 1956, at the much a part of childhood
age of 74. now as they were almost
Riordan said: “It was a century ago: they
fascinating to discover remain wonderful stories
this little-known story to share aloud with
about AA Milne, so it felt children and to inspire a
appropriate to give this love of reading. So as we
brave little dog a The new Winnie-the-Pooh stories will feature Carmen, look forward to
place alongside in tribute to a toy dog that AA Milne took to war celebrating the
Christopher centenary in 2026,
Robin and “We feel she’s earned toy, the new character Farshore is delighted
friends in her right to enjoy the will be a “real” dog — to be publishing this
our new peace of the forest, just at least, to the same collection of
stories. like all the readers who extent that Piglet is a adventures.”
have been delighted by real pig. Winnie-the-Pooh:
the Winnie-the-Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh: Tales from the Forest,
stories over the years.” Tales from the Forest published by Farshore,
Although the real will feature seven will be available from
Carmen was a stuffed adventures starring September 28

Arts Council apologises to worker Sexism rows

at the double
branded a Nazi for gender views on BBC radio
Charlie Parker
A senior Arts Council England official
who was harassed over her views on
trans people has vowed to continue
fighting “intolerance within the sector”
after winning a settlement from the
organisation.
Denise Fahmy, 55, warned that those
working in the arts were being “deeply
affected” by the abuse they received for
holding “gender-critical” views that
people cannot change their sex.
She was called a neo-Nazi and a
“cancer that needs to be removed” by
colleagues after she questioned a
decision by the council to withdraw
funding from a gay rights group it said
was transphobic.
Fahmy, a former relationship manag-
er for visual arts, won an employment
tribunal case against the council in
June. The panel ruled that she had been
subjected to harassment by colleagues.
It was reported yesterday that
Fahmy, from West Yorkshire, had won a
formal apology and an undisclosed sum
from her former employer, which is
funded by the government and the
National Lottery.
In a statement she thanked her legal
team and the 1,284 people who raised
£46,145 to support her legal costs. “Your
words, your contributions and your
support enabled me to win my case and
prove that thanks to Maya Forstater,
people that believe sex is binary and
immutable and cannot change should
no longer be harassed at work for
saying so,” she said. Forstater lost out on
a job after tweeting about her gender-
critical views, but was awarded
£100,000 when an employment tribu-
nal found that she had experienced dis-
crimination.
Fahmy said that the remaining
balance from her fundraising would be
transferred to another campaign
related to defending gender-critical
beliefs.
Fahmy’s case concerned a grant of
£9,400 that was given to the LGB
Alliance by the Arts Council to make a
film for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum
Jubilee. The film showed how the lives
of gay men had improved during her
70-year reign. The funding was
withdrawn last year after claims that
the alliance was transphobic because its
members believe sex is binary and that
trans women cannot be lesbians.
Simon Mellor, the council’s deputy
chief executive, held a meeting with 411
staff members at which he said the alli-
ance had a history of anti-trans-
exclusionary activity. Fahmy, who had
worked at the council for 15 years before
leaving this year, asked why the funding
had been removed and what message
that sent about freedom of speech.
After her comments, a colleague
circulated an email and petition on the
council’s intranet that targeted those
deemed anti-trans and said that people
with gender-critical views were cultur-
al parasites, neo-Nazis and a cancer
that needed removing.
A Leeds employment tribunal ruled
that Fahmy suffered harassment,
adding that it “doubts the wisdom” of
Mellor giving his personal views.
Fahmy lost a claim of victimisation.
The ruling, given on June 26 this
year, said Arts Council England had
taken steps to address the incident at
the time but that the claimant had not
been adequately protected from har-
assment by some of her peers.
An Arts Council England spokes-
woman said: ”We respect the findings
of the judgment and are sorry that, de-
spite the actions we took at the time, a
member of our team experienced
harassment at work. We are committed
to making sure that similar instances do
not happen again.”
Peter Chappell
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme has
been criticised as sexist after a reporter
asked the owner of a logistics company
if she wished she had started a knitting
business instead.
Adam Shaw, a business journalist,
was interviewing Kylie Aldridge,
founder of KL Logistics and the owner
of a café, about inflation figures.
Shaw, 49, said: “You run a transport
business, you’re a busy woman, you also
run a food business, a café — both in
some of the most volatile inflationary
markets you could have chose. You ha-
ven’t made it easy on yourself. Have you
ever wished you opened a knitting busi-
ness or something?”
Appearing surprised, Aldridge
replied: “Well, no.”
Some listeners were angered and
accused the presenter of sexism. Kay
Fuller, a professor of gender and educa-
tional leadership at Nottingham Uni-
versity, called the question “ridiculous”.

Coroner criticises trans clinic waits after death
Jaya Narain
The NHS is not equipped to deal with
the rising needs of transgender
patients, a coroner has said.
Sarah Clarke said that the services
available to trans people were “under-
funded and insufficiently resourced”.
The training of people who cared for
trans patients, the lack of mental
healthcare and long waiting lists for
treatment all needed to be examined,
she added.
Clarke was speaking after an inquest
was told that a trans woman had killed
herself after spending almost three
years on a waiting list.
Alice Litman, 20, from Leatherhead
in Surrey, died in May last year after
1,023 days on a waiting list. She had been
referred for gender-affirming health-
care in August 2019 but was still waiting
for an initial consultation at the Tavis-
tock Centre in London.
The inquest at Sussex County Cricket
Ground in Hove was told that there
were more than 13,000 people on the
waiting list for a first appointment at the
Tavistock’s gender identity clinic. It
heard that the rising numbers of trans
patients meant that someone present-
ing for treatment today could expect to
wait more than 20 years to be seen.
Dr James Barrett, director of the
Tavistock, said long waiting lists were a
national problem and that clinics across
the globe were seeing an increase in
demand for care. “There are very many
people with remarkably similar situa-
tions to Alice,” he said. “The size
of the population we’re dealing with,
the services aren’t big enough.”
Litman was found with multiple
injuries on Undercliff Walk, near
Roedean School in Brighton in the early
hours of May 26 last year.
The coroner said that she would
consider writing a “prevention of future
deaths” report. “It’s not about appor-
tioning blame,” she said. “All of these
services are underfunded and insuffi-
ciently resourced for the level of need
in our society.”
She adjourned the hearing for two
weeks but said that she would make a
narrative finding on Litman’s death.
She wrote on Twitter/X: “Do you wish
you ever started a knitting business? To
[a] business woman. Assumption a
woman might find that easier than
what she was doing. Assumption a
knitting business is easy to run.”
Later in yesterday’s show, the pre-
senter Justin Webb was criticised for
assuming a chief constable was a man.
During an interview with Webb,
Katy Bourne, police and crime com-
missioner for Sussex, praised her chief
constable. Webb then referred to the
chief constable as a “he”, which prompt-
ed a terse response from Bourne. She
replied: “My chief constable is a she, by
the way, I’m delighted for that as well.”
The BBC declined to comment.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
The hazards of AI: Fry loses voice and his footing
Mark Sellman Technology Correspondent
Peter Chappell
Stephen Fry has said it is a “weird time
to be alive” after his voice was cloned
and used in a documentary without his
permission.
The actor and author, 66, warned
against the dangers of deepfakes as he
revealed his shock at discovering a
narration in his voice that he had not
recorded.
He played the clip, from a historical
documentary, to the CogX festival in
London and said: “I said not one word
of that — it was a machine. Yes, it
shocked me. They used my reading of
the seven volumes of the Harry Potter
books and from that data-set an AI of
my voice was created, and it made that
new narration.”
Fry did not say who made the docu-
mentary, but added: “It could therefore
have me read anything from a call to
storm parliament to hard porn, all
without my knowledge and without my
permission. And this, what you just
heard, was done without my know-
ledge. So I heard about this, I sent it to
TMS
diary@thetimes.co.uk | @timesdiary
Future’s back
to haunt us
The two main political parties are
going back to the future with their
conference slogans. Labour’s is
“Give Britain its future back”
while Rishi Sunak spoke yesterday
in front of the clunky “Long-term
decisions for a brighter future”.
This reprises the 2015 election
choice when the Tories offered “a
more secure future” and Labour “a
better future”. The word also
featured in the Lib Dems’ slogan
in 2017 and 2019 and was behind
John Major’s success in 1992. The
least successful use of the F-word
was by Labour in 2010, when they
campaigned under “A future fair
for all”. Deborah Mattinson,
Gordon Brown’s pollster, later
admitted that focus groups
thought it referred to promising
“some kind of sci-fi dodgem park”.
Nigel Fletcher’s new history of failed
leaders of the opposition contains a
gloriously cutting Times obituary
from 1889 about a man who was
briefly and unmemorably Tory
leader in the Lords. “The death of
Lord Malmesbury . . . will strike many
readers with a feeling of surprise,” it
began, “not that he should be dead,
but that he should until yesterday
have been alive.” Ouch.
hard times
Fletcher’s book also has one of the
most notorious incidents in Times
history when we reported in 1882
that William Harcourt, then
home secretary, had told an
audience of farmers in
Burton-upon-Trent that he
“felt inclined for a bit of
f***ing”. This was no typo,
nor was it hidden, as now,
behind asterisks. It was
the act of a compositor
with a grievance and led
to it becoming the most
popular edition of the
paper. What cost 3d was
within hours changing
17
News
my agents on both sides of the Atlantic, considering opening an investigation. have it narrate Mein Kampf. Meta has
and they went ballistic — they had no A spokesperson for the event said: developed a model called Voicebox that
idea such a thing was possible.” “We were deeply concerned to hear of can clone a voice from two seconds of
Fry said that he warned his agent: Stephen’s accident after giving his audio, but decided not to release it
“You ain’t seen nothing yet. This is inspirational speech on the impact of because of the potential harm.
audio. It won’t be long until full AI. We are thinking of him and wishing Fry, who has always been keen to
deepfake videos are just as convincing.” him a swift recovery. We have opened embrace new technologies, told the
Peter Nunn, partner at the law firm our own inquiry.” audience: “We have to think about [AI]
Mishcon de Reya, said Fry’s options for Cloning voices has become much like the first automobile: impressive but
legal action were limited as English easier over the past year as AI models not the finished article. Tech is not a
copyright law did not cover voices. have become more sophisticated. noun, it is a verb, it is always moving.
It went from bad to worse for the ElevenLabs, a London-based start-up, What we have now is not what will be.
comedian as he was taken to hospital has built an AI tool that can clone voices When it comes to AI models, what we
with rib and leg injuries after a “tumble” in 30 languages. It was forced to put have now will advance at a faster rate
from the 6ft-high stage at the AI festival extra protections on the technology than any technology we have ever seen.
in London’s O2. Fry had finished this year after it was used to clone the Stephen Fry fell from a 6ft-high stage, One thing we can all agree on: It’s a
addressing the festival last Thursday voice of the actress Emma Watson and having warned about deepfake video f***ing weird time to be alive.”
and was leaving the stage when he fell.
The organisers are investigating.
A source said: “It looked like it was
too dark and it didn’t look like there was
a handrail. He fell two metres to the
floor. He looked to have been hurt as he
had to leave in a wheelchair.”
It is not clear whether the star is in
hospital, but he has not posted on social
media since the accident.
Greenwich council said that it had
been alerted to the incident and was
hands for 12/6. Where there’s
muck, there’s brass.
wolfe in sheep’s clothing
Five years after his death, the
American author Tom Wolfe is
getting a Netflix adaptation of his
novel A Man in Full and a
documentary on his life. While
Wolfe could be coarse in print, he
was extremely polite in private. “I
never heard him curse, not once,”
his daughter Alexandra told Air
Mail. She was shocked, therefore,
when she read the bad language in
his first novel, which became
known as Bonfire of the Profanities.
“We weren’t even allowed to say
‘stink’,” she said. “We’d have to say
‘That smells bad.’”
The early compilers of the Oxford
English Dictionary were more
perturbed by foreign words. Sarah
Ogilvie, author of The Dictionary
People, tells Sam Leith’s podcast
that one contributor had qualms
about the C-word. Not that one but
“condom”. “All obscene things come
out of France,” he warned in a note
to the dictionary’s editor that was so
sensitive he put it inside two
envelopes to deaden the effect.
mother of all careers
Brooke Shields was set on a career
in showbiz by her pushy mother
almost from birth. “I practically
came out of the womb famous,”
the actress said in her new one-
woman show in New York. “They
tell me the doctor asked for a
selfie.” Shields, 58, shot her first
advert at 11 months and made her
film debut ten years later. Among
odd early encounters, she had a
job pre-chewing Elizabeth
Taylor’s gum. “I got the better
end of the deal,” she said. Her
mother, meanwhile, moved
on to toying with other
species. Shields, left, said
she liked to kneel beside
dogs tied up outside shops
waiting for their owners
and tell them: “They’re
never coming back.”
patrick kidd
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 2GM 19

News

Bulger murderer wins parole hearing

Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor
James Bulger’s killer Jon Venables
could be freed by the end of the year
after he was granted a parole hearing.
He will face a two-day hearing on
November 14 and 15, but the Parole
Board has rejected requests for it to be
heard in public, which would have
meant him being forced to answer
questions on a live video link.
Venables and Robert Thompson,
who were then aged ten, tortured and
killed two-year-old James after snatch-
ing him from a shopping centre in Boot-
le, Merseyside, in February 1993.
The pair were jailed for life but re-
leased on licence with new identities in
2001. Venables was sent back to prison
in 2010 and again in 2017 for possessing
indecent images of children. A Parole
Board hearing in 2020 decided that he
should not be released.
Decisions are usually made within a
fortnight of a parole hearing.
If a decision to free a prisoner
is not challenged within 21 days, the in-
dividual must be released. It means that
Venables could be released by the end
of the year.
A panel of three will cross-examine
Venables in private and take evidence
from several prison staff, including
officers who have had day-to-day con-
tact with him, his probation officer and
psychiatrists.
Impact statements from James’s
mother and father will also be read out,
urging the Parole Board to reject his at-
tempt at freedom.
The hearing will come at a controver-
sial time, before a new ministerial veto
comes into effect for parole decisions.
A change in the law being made as
part of the Victims and Prisoners Bill,
which is going through parliament, will
give ministers the opportunity to block
the release of the most dangerous crim-
inals, including murderers, terrorists
and rapists.
A Parole Board spokesman said:
“Parole Board decisions are solely
focused on what risk a prisoner could
represent to the public if released
and whether that risk is manageable in
the community.
“A panel will carefully examine a
huge range of evidence, including de-
tails of the original crime, and any evi-
dence of behaviour change, as well as
explore the harm done and impact the
crime has had on the victims. Members
Jon Venables was
ten when he killed
the two-year-old
James Bulger
read . . . hundreds of pages of evidence
and reports in the lead-up to an oral
hearing. Evidence from witnesses in-
cluding probation officers, psychiatrists
and psychologists, officials supervising
the offender in prison, as well as victim
personal statements, are then given at
the hearing.
“The prisoner and witnesses are then
questioned at length during the hear-
ing, which often lasts a full day or more.
“Parole reviews are undertaken
thoroughly and with extreme care.
Protecting the public is our number
one priority.”
Urging the Parole Board to keep Ve-
nables behind bars, Denise Fergus, Ja-
mie Bulger’s mother, said: “If you let
him free, you could be ruining the lives
of another family like ours.
“When you look at Venables’s file just
remember what he is capable of. He
killed my son James and has reoffended
time and time again.”

wounded, aboard before

it suffered two direct
hits from German Stuka
bombers and then rolled
over after a third
explosion. Twenty-five
people died, but the ship
survived long enough for
survivors to evacuate on
to HMS Saltash.
Also sunk that day was
HMS Brighton Queen,
an Edwardian paddle
steamer that had been
turned into a
minesweeper. It was
carrying 700 French and
Rescue mission to find Moroccan troops.
The motivation for the
Dunkirk’s lost ships mission is both historic
and environmental.
There are concerns that

T
hey came from
naval docks
and private
moorings, from
the high seas
and river estuaries (Jack
Blackburn writes). Small
and vast, military and
civilian, more than 800
ships went to save the
troops at Dunkirk.
When the men were
home, 305 vessels had
been lost forever.
From next week,
however, some of those
craft are to be
uncovered as an Anglo-
French mission to find
the lost ships of
Operation Dynamo
begins. Historic England
has been invited by
Drassm, the French
department of
underwater
archaeological research,
to help to map the
wrecks. The work will
begin with a geophysical
survey before divers are
sent next year to see the
wrecks up close.
“These wrecks are a
physical legacy to
Operation Dynamo and
all those it affected,
including many who did
not reach safety,”
Duncan Wilson, chief
executive of Historic
England, said.
The survey will look at
37 wrecks that have
been located, and an
area near the Dunkirk
coast will be searched
for undiscovered craft. A
multibeam echosounder,
side-scan sonar and
magnetometer will
scour the depths in the
Among the troops brought home were thousands saved from HMS Havant, one of the vessels the survey will explore
hope of finding some of
the 31 vessels thought to
be in the area. Most
were British.
Dr Antony Firth, of
Historic England, said:
“The vessels range in
role from military
activities, but also a
wide range of utility
vessels, pleasure craft,
fishing vessels and so on.”
The work is expected
to produce video and
photography from the
wrecks, bringing new
discoveries about what
happened to them and
the people on board. All
of this will feed into new
content for the Dunkirk
War Museum in the
town itself, and will be
used in the planning for
a new Dunkirk
memorial. Some on the
list of craft to be
investigated have
striking and moving
stories. The destroyer
HMS Havant saved
2,300 troops when it
went to assist the
stricken HMS Ivanhoe
on June 1. It got all the
men, including the
many of the craft
contain oil that may
leak and pollute the
environment.
Firth said: “There’s an
ongoing concern over
wrecks releasing
pollution as they decay
or if they get hit by
something and there’s
some structural collapse.
There is also the
memorialisation aspect,
as some of the vessels
were lost with very
heavy loss of life.”
Drassm has done
similar work in
Normandy, looking for
lost D-Day craft.
The new mission will
need the same luck that
the ships got in 1940.
“We need some good
weather, that’s the main
thing,” Firth said.

Farmer who trained birds for cockfighting is convicted of cruelty

Will Humphries
Countryside Correspondent
A farmer who trained birds for cock-
fighting has been given a suspended
prison sentence for animal cruelty.
Officers from the RSPCA and police
found 22 hens and cockerels that had
been kept in terrible conditions, with-
out food or water. Some had suffered
cuts, swelling and lost feathers.
Video on a mobile phone seized by
West Yorkshire police showed that
Douglas Price, 39, of Clayton, Bradford,
had been training the cocks to fight.
He was convicted at Bradford crown
court of causing unnecessary suffering
to protected animals, failing to ensure
the needs of animals were met, and
keeping or training animals for use in
connection with an animal fight. He unable to bear weight on one of her legs.
was sentenced on September 8 to nine Blood sport passed through families In a metal pen there was a cockerel that
months in prison, suspended for 18 was limping and had a swollen leg, and
months, and banned from keeping hens Cockfights can last use muffs to cover The charity says inside a shed there was a hen that was
or cockerels for 12 months. anywhere from ten their sharp claws, or cockfighting remains limping. Due to the number of animal
Cockfighting has been outlawed minutes to an hour, but spurs, while fighting popular among “certain welfare concerns, I contacted a vet who
since 1835, but the RSPCA said it had birds fighting with practice birds. societal groups, having confirmed that a number of these birds
received more than 350 reports about sharpened claws or with While cockfighting been passed down from had been suffering.”
such activities between 2012 and 2020. blades attached to their was traditionally generation to One dead cockerel was found and
Demi Hodby, an RSPCA inspector legs may survive for considered a rural generation as part of three birds were put down. The surviv-
sent to the site in Bradford, said: “All of only a few minutes, as pastime, the RSPCA’s their culture”. ing birds were rehomed by the RSPCA.
the birds appeared to be underweight one puncture wound special operations unit It adds: “We’ve often The court was told in mitigation that
with feather loss on their chests — the can quickly kill. has intelligence of it come across fathers Price was illiterate and the sole carer for
majority were bald in this area. Participants often let happening across the and sons who are his children and grandchildren. He ran
“A number of the cockerels had inju- birds fight to the death country, from urban involved in the sport, a working farm and his business and
ries and all appeared to have had their and a winning cock can allotments and gardens with fathers passing it home would be at risk if he was jailed.
combs cut. There was a limited amount become a champion to farms and down to their son in Price was also sentenced to 20 re-
of food and water in each pen and some after just a few victories. agricultural settings order to continue the habilitation days and 100 hours of un-
had no provisions. Inside one of the During training they deep in the countryside. bloodline of their birds.” paid work and ordered to pay a £156 vic-
wooden pens there was a hen that was tim surcharge and £400 costs.
20
News
Alzheimer’s
charities hail
Livingstone
Seren Hughes
Alzheimer’s charities have welcomed
the disclosure from Ken Livingstone’s
family that he is living with the disease.
Although Livingstone, 78, the first
mayor of London and the former La-
bour MP for Brent East, had largely re-
treated from public life in recent years
after more than four decades in politics,
he would no longer be available for me-
dia interviews, his family said.
They added: “Ken is being well cared
for by his family and friends and we ask
you for your understanding and to re-
spect his privacy and that of his family.”
The Alzheimer’s Society said: “We’re
grateful to Ken’s family for being open
about his diagnosis, which will really
help increase public understanding.”
Alzheimer’s Research UK added:
“We hope this will put a further spot-
light on the desperate need to find new
treatments for all forms of dementia.”
Livingstone became the first mayor
of London as an independent in 2000
and won a second term as Labour’s can-
didate. He left the party in 2018 after
being named in an antisemitism report.
Beat literature Charlie Watts’s drums form a backdrop at Christie’s where the late Rolling Stone’s books, and jazz awards given to Charlie Parker, are to be auctioned
Son lambasts UK for failing to
demand release of jailed tycoon
Fiona Hamilton Chief Reporter
Jimmy Lai’s son has accused the
government of “sacrificing” his father’s
human rights to secure better ties
with China as the media magnate ap-
proaches 1,000 days behind bars in
Hong Kong.
Sebastien Lai hit out at the govern-
ment’s failure to explicitly call for the
release of his 75-year-old father while it
focuses on a better trading relationship
in the region.
Lai’s requests for a meeting with
Rishi Sunak and James Cleverly, the
foreign secretary, about his father
have so far fallen on deaf ears.
Next week marks the
1,000th day that Lai, a pro-
democracy advocate, has
been incarcerated in Hong
Kong charged with offen-
ces under its national
security law. Lai, who was
among hundreds of people
imprisoned by the Chinese
regime when it crushed the
2019 Hong Kong uprising,
is facing a maximum life
sentence. He was the owner
of Apple Daily, among Hong
Six-month delay for report into blood scandal
Peter Chappell
Publication of the report from the
public inquiry into infected blood has
been delayed until March due to the
“sheer volume and scale” of the investi-
gation, its chairman said yesterday.
The investigation into how thou-
sands of patients were infected with
HIV and hepatitis C by contaminated
blood products in the 1970s and 1980s
had been due to publish its final report
this autumn.
But Sir Brian Langstaff, the chair-
man, said the deadline was “not realis-
tic” because of “the weight of criticisms
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Jimmy Lai, a Kong’s most popular newspapers until
pro-democracy it was forcibly closed by the authorities
advocate and the in 2021.
founder of Apple Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, Sebastien
Daily, is escorted to Lai’s lawyer, said that he was fighting a
court in Hong Kong war on two fronts: “China is a powerful
in December 2020 enemy. He shouldn’t have to fight the
British government as well to get them
to be more robust”. She said that it
“beggars belief” that he had not been
able to meet Cleverly.
Lai noted that the government had
not called for the release of his
father, a British citizen, even though
the US and United Nations had
done so. He said: “Even now they’re
not using language to call for his
release which I think, as a
British citizen, is shameful.”
When Cleverly was in
Beijing last month, he
raised the case with his
counterpart. However, Lai
said the language was far
from robust and accused the
government of prioritising
trade over putting pressure on
the authorities about his
father’s incarceration.
“This is one of those situa-
tions where the Foreign Office
made of individuals and organisations”.
In 2017, when she was prime minister,
Theresa May ordered the inquiry into
what she called an “appalling trage-
dy which should simply never have
happened”.
It is estimated that at least 2,400
patients died. Thousands of adults
and about 380 children received in-
fected blood products or transfusions.
Most of those involved were given
injections of factor VIII, a product
made in the US and which used con-
taminated blood from prisoners, drug Sir Brian Langstaff
addicts and others. said the deadline
Des Collins, senior partner of Collins was not realistic
says one thing and the trade office says
another thing. Money isn’t everything,
there’s stuff that’s more important,”
he said.
Fiona O’Brien, director of the
London bureau of Reporters Without
Borders, said: “His father is British and
Sebastien is British. Why is it not
possible for the PM and foreign secre-
tary to say very clearly in parliament
that ‘it’s an outrage, our citizens
shouldn’t be in prison?’ ”
This week Kemi Badenoch, the
secretary of state for business and
trade, appointed Lewis Neal as the
trade commissioner for China and
Hong Kong. Her announcement re-
ferred to the importance of “expanding
opportunities for British businesses in
one of the world’s fastest growing
markets”.
In a letter to Badenoch on Tuesday,
Lai said that: “I fail to understand how
your approach is in the interests of Brit-
ish businesses, the British public or my
father, a British national.” He said that
her comments “conflict with promises
made to me by your government” to
help his father’s case.
The Foreign Office did not respond
to a request for comment.
Solicitors, which represents 1,500
people and their families, said: “This is
another devastating blow, although
the delay is understandable. We call
upon the government to implement
a proper compensation scheme as
soon as possible.
“Victims are dying at a rate of one
in every four days so another six
months-plus will be too late for many.
If it fails to do so, we fully expect to be
instructed by our clients to restore the
group action against the [health secre-
tary] and ask that the question of
compensation be referred back to
the court.”
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 21

News

Burberry puts argue that this was the

brand that invented the
it-bag, with its so-called
“baguette” style of 1997.
Was Jones intending to

foot in it with
draw our attention to the
fact that, where once we
put up statues to gods,
now we worship
mammon? If so, this was
a punchy move for a

familiar loafer luxury designer. Talking

of the 21st-century
pantheon, the front row
encompassed the
actresses Demi Moore
and Naomi Watts plus the
Hannah Rogers laboration. One social media poster supermodels Naomi
wrote: “SURELY the cooler thing Campbell and Linda
Burberry, the veteran British brand, has would have been to reinvent the classic Evangelista.
been accused of copying a design by Cox as a collab with the man himself! A suitably statuesque
Patrick Cox, the shoe producer. That would have been cool. Instead it’s palette of muted greys
Cox, whose fashionable footwear was just a rip off.” and browns was uplifted
worn by Britpop stars and clubland Cox said he had collaborated with with shades of yellow,
ravers in the Nineties, has claimed that designers who called him to say they orange and teal, and
Burberry’s new navy patent heeled
loafer looks very much like his cult
wanted to produce a shoe similar to the
Wannabe. “That’s how an ethical brand
Fendi gives further transformed by
Mondrian-like colour-
leather shoe, the Wannabe.
Burberry’s slip-on has a similar
works,” he added.
The Wannabe sold 20,000 pairs in its us wealth blocking over leather
tailoring and body-con
crinkly, shiny exterior, a tubular moc- first season in 1993. One set is on per- knits. As for jumpers tied
casin shape and an open “peeper” zip
over the bridge.
manent display at the V&A Museum.
The Gallagher brothers, Liam and
by stealth over the shoulders in
a style best
A social media post showcasing the Noel, wore the shoe when they were in described as
shoes has received thousands of com- Oasis and Liam’s 23-year-old son Len- Anna Murphy “Euro”, has
ments from Cox’s fans, pointing out the non wore a pair on Monday when he sat fashion director Jones gone
similarities and calling on Burberry to in the front row at the Burberry show. native?
Burberry hopes that his generation Added into

M
will buy into the Wannabe aesthetic — ilan the mix were
but not to the benefit of Cox, who has Fashion python prints,
left comments addressing the situation Week ankle-bracelet
on the brand’s Instagram post. opened pumps, and a
He was joined by Sam McKnight, the yesterday with Fendi, ribbed textile
hair stylist, who wrote under the the Rome brand that appeared
Burberry promotion: “Gotta love a headed by the British to be towelling
@thepatrickcox”. designer Kim Jones. but revealed
Burberry’s shoe, left, and Patrick Cox’s Cox has not heard from the label and A series of simple itself on closer
does not plan to take legal action. He column dresses were inspection to
credit the Wannabe design. Cox told simply wants the brand to give him inspired, Jones consist of thin
The Times: “I’ve been copied a thou- credit. “The decent thing to do would be explained backstage strips of organza-
sand times — that’s fashion. to acknowledge it,” he said. before the show, “by the backed shearling.
“High street stores copying my shoes Burberry has already been criticised walk I take every Stealth wealth indeed.
is expected. This is different — it’s this week for closing much of Highbury morning when I am Designers like to talk
Burberry. I don’t think it’s a great move Fields, in Islington, north London, for staying in the city from about the importance of
for an iconic British brand in the middle days before its fashion week show. Resi- my hotel to the “ease” and “lightness” at
of a relaunch to copy another iconic dents complained that they wanted Colosseum. I wanted the the moment. Sure enough
British brand.” their park back. models to look like the Jones used both words
The Canadian-British designer, who The five-day takeover of Bond Street statues I see.” backstage. He also did a
has twice won British fashion designer Tube station, renaming it Burberry Four statues of a notably good job when it
of the year, lives in Ibiza. He was alerted Street, in collaboration with Transport different kind loomed came to delivering said
to the lookalike through messages on for London, was criticised for confusing over the catwalk, giant A statuesque qualities on the catwalk,
Instagram because his followers commuters and tourists. renderings of Fendi’s collection with with clothes that looked
wanted to know whether he was work- The collection was the second by bestselling handbag uplifts of luxurious but laid-back.
ing with the British luxury label. Cox Daniel Lee, 37, the Bradford-born de- styles. Like most luxury colour was The rich want to be just
has confirmed that he is not. signer who made his name creating labels, Fendi makes most watched by Demi as comfortable as the rest
He said he was “hurt” by seeing Bur- shoes and bags for Bottega Veneta, the of its profits from its arm Moore, Naomi of us these days, but they
berry’s post and agreed with the com- Italian label. candy. Indeed, some Campbell and also want to look and feel
menters who asked why Burberry had Burberry did not respond to a request would go as far as to Kate Moss the right kind of “more”.
not approached him for an official col- for comment about the shoes.
22
News
Greggs eats humble pie over wrong Richmond
Tom Ball Northern Correspondent
It was intended as a decorative touch
for Greggs customers as they queued
for coffee and sausage rolls.
But patrons were left scratching their
heads after it emerged that the newly
refurbished branch of the bakery in
Richmond, North Yorkshire, had been
adorned with photographs of Rich-
mond-upon-Thames, London.
The black and white scenes showed
the Thames flowing under Richmond
bridge and signposts to the London
landmarks of Tower Bridge and Kew
Gardens. Greggs, which prides itself on
its strong northern identity and was
The photos in the Yorkshire branch showed Richmond-upon-Thames scenes
founded in Newcastle upon Tyne, has-
tily removed the photos yesterday after
widespread mockery.
Photos of the Greggs branch in
Richmond-upon-Thames show that its
walls are hung with the same pictures.
Paul Harrison, chairman of the Rich-
mond Business and Tourism Associa-
tion, said that it was “rather ironic for
this to happen when Greggs is a
2GM
company based in the northeast. Given
this is also the original Richmond and
the prime minister’s constituency, it’s
careless to say the least and terribly
embarrassing for Greggs. I suspect
some of their marketing execs will have
a lot of egg on their face today. But it’s
not a first. People are always mixing us
up with our London namesake.”
The two Richmonds are more than
240 miles apart. The Yorkshire town’s
name dates back to the 11th century
when the area was given to the French
noble Alain le Roux by William the
Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings.
When Henry VII, who had been Earl
of Richmond, ascended to the throne
he moved to Sheen palace in
southwest London and renamed it Rich-
mond palace.
There are thought to be more than 90
other Richmonds around the world.
Rishi Sunak has represented the
Yorkshire Richmond since 2015. Sarah
Wooden structure builds
on Stone Age knowledge
Niall Jeffrey
Half a million years ago, on the banks of
the Kalambo River in Zambia, a group
of humans began to build something.
We don’t know what they were making,
or why. But we do know that, using
stone tools, they did something both
unremarkable and revolutionary: they
joined together some logs.
In doing so, they have forced us to re-
think our Stone Age ancestors, for this
discovery, published in the journal Na-
ture, is believed to be the earliest
human-made wooden structure found.
“This find has changed how I think
about our early ancestors,” said Pro-
fessor Larry Barham, from the Univers-
ity of Liverpool. “Forget the label Stone
Age, look at what these people were do-
ing: they made something new, and
large, from wood.”
Barham and a team of archaeologists
unearthed the primeval wooden struc-
tures from sediment by Kalambo Falls.
They have interlocking joints, hand-
crafted with stone tools, and at about
476,000 years old predate the emer-
gence of our own species.
“At this period in the past it is unlikely
these people were modern humans,
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Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Olney, the Liberal Democrat MP for
Richmond-upon-Thames, tweeted: “If
I was the local MP for Richmond
(Yorks), I’d be furious.”
Close to the bakery in Market Place,
a resident told BBC Look North: “They
have made a big boo-boo, haven’t they?
It’s somebody in head office who thinks
they know more than the locals.”
Mark Denton, 52, a photographer and
Richmond resident, told Richmond-
shire Today: “I’m happy to give them
photos [of the correct Richmond] for
free although if they did want to pay me
I’d accept a piece of pepperoni pizza.”
The first Greggs was set up in New-
castle in 1939. The chain is so strongly
connected with the north that a study
this year proposed that the dividing line
between north and south could be
marked by the distribution of Greggs
versus Pret a Mangers.
Greggs did not respond to a request
for comment.
Homo sapiens,” Geoff Duller, a pro-
fessor at Aberystwyth University, said.
“Until now, we thought of palaeolithic
people as nomadic, but these are large
structures made of logs that are not
portable — it required time and effort.”
Aside from being a prehistoric home,
a suggested use of this structure is as a
fishing pier into the river, or perhaps as
a platform to keep food or firewood dry
above the floodplain.
Owing to the old age of the wood,
standard radiocarbon dating was not
an option. Instead, scientists used a
technique called luminescence dating.
Sand grains around the wood act as
batteries, slowly charging from low-
level radiation within the ground. The
amount of energy stored by the grains
allowed scientists to pinpoint when the
wooden structure was buried.
One of the logs has been carefully
shipped to Liverpool for further scien-
tific testing. The sodden wood cannot
be allowed to dry out for any extended
period, as the waterlogged conditions
by the river were the reason it was pre-
served for so long. Once the analysis in
the UK is completed, the pieces will be
reunited in Zambia. “It’s where they be-
long,” Duller said.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
These days anyone can pose
as a serious thinker
James Marriott
Page 24
Sunak is closer to Truss than he’d like to think
Both the PM and his predecessor fail to grasp the need for a muscular industrial policy and a larger role for government
Juliet
Samuel
@citysamuel
I
f Liz Truss, still going strong on
her tour to rewrite history,
represents one wing of the Tory
party, who stands for the other?
Rishi Sunak may have been the
only man obviously left standing
after her immolation by bond market
last year, but it’s not him. In fact
Sunak and Truss, for all their bitter
rivalry, are on the same side of the
most salient debate about economic
growth. No prominent figure has
yet chosen to stand explicitly on
the other.
The debate is about how Britain
ought to respond to the decision, first
taken in Asia and now followed by
the US and Europe, to put
government largesse back at the
heart of economic policy.
Truss and Sunak both believe
fundamentally that Britain should go
against the tide. They are techno-
optimists, with little interest in what
they think of as backwards,
retrograde activities such as
manufacturing, and a Thatcher-
derived allergy to phrases like
“industrial policy” and “subsidy”.
Truss may frame herself as an
anti-establishment iconoclast and
Sunak as sensible guardian of
institutionalism, but they actually
share in some of HM Treasury’s
most sacrosanct orthodoxies.
The Treasury inculcates its junior
officials and politicians alike with the
belief that a good economy is one
where the government always takes
a hands-off approach and where
unilateral free trade is always an
unassailable good. Truss, as we know,
did not share the Treasury’s fearful
respect for bond markets and,
despite her own warnings that
markets had been wrecked by a
decade’s worth of monetary policy,
preferred to skate right out on to the
thinnest ice and then claim
astonishment when she fell through.
But in other circumstances she,
Sunak and the bean counters might
all have rubbed along rather well. If
Treasury officials believe markets
would bear it, after all, they would
always rather cut taxes than, say,
fund a multibillion-pound nuclear-
power building programme. They
would always buy cheap over British.
They would always favour banks
over factories, which is why there is a
Treasury director-general for
financial services but none for
manufacturing. In this, the
mandarins, Sunak and Truss think
as one.
Events have a habit of not co-
We must make do
with less and therefore
we must do it better
operating with ideology, however.
Times have changed. It would be
better if we allowed our orthodoxies
to change with them. Principles that
might have served us well during a
period of undisputed Anglosphere
hegemony are now past their shelf
life. Quietly, the government is
shifting gear, but it is doing so in a
piecemeal, sheepish manner, as if
hoping we won’t notice the odd
billion shovelled out the door here
and there.
It began with £500 million handed
to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in May
to build a car battery factory in
Somerset. Without a decent
domestic battery-making capacity,
British carmaking could be rendered
uncompetitive, risking what is
currently a viable ecosystem of
800,000 jobs. The latest move in
this vein is another £500 million
promised to Tata Steel (incidentally
also the owner of JLR) to revamp
and decarbonise its steel production
in Wales.
The latter agreement has its critics,
on the grounds that it will still mean
losing a lot of jobs and will make our
production reliant on imports of
recyclable scrap steel, which would
probably come from China. The
subsidy agreements may not be
perfect but they have started to
enshrine an important principle that
will be essential to making all of this
work: companies must not be paid
simply to keep failing industries
going and people on payroll but to
build new, cutting-edge industries
that can provide sustainable jobs.
They must be paid, however, as the
government is tacitly admitting, to
avoid decimation by the tide of
subsidies from abroad. There are still
major pieces missing, like policies to
bring down energy costs, a scale-up
of government financing for new
technologies and deciding quickly on
huge chunks of regulation for new
industries, such as carbon-capture
specifications.
There are unanswered,
unpalatable questions: what to do
about the shiploads of electric cars
being dumped on the market by
China, for instance, and how to
withstand the onslaught of American
giga-cheques flooding green
industries. Everyone agrees we
cannot possibly match either country
in scale; both appear able to waste
billions and sustain the resulting
debt (although for how long, few can
say). We must make do with less, and
therefore must do it better.
Comment
Like Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak believes
Britain should go against the tide
And, no doubt, there is still a deep
aversion in No 10 to the phrase
“industrial strategy”. But faced with
the facts on the ground, others like
Jeremy Hunt and Kemi Badenoch
have shifted tack. Hunt, influenced
by his adviser Kristen McLeod, who
developed a life sciences industrial
strategy before and during Covid,
has even started using the phrase. It
may make Sunak uncomfortable
but the dogma of non-intervention,
of “global markets always know
best”, is in retreat.
All of this renders Truss’s
interventions almost quaint. To be
generous to the ex-prime minister,
she did start putting a few building
blocks in place, such as an energy
supply taskforce, foolishly ditched by
Sunak. But fundamentally, faced with
the question of how Britain can
survive in a completely new
23
economic environment, her response
is: “We need to spell out our
philosophy [because] Conservatives
can’t just assume people have read
Milton Friedman.” She always turns
backwards, to the lodestar of
Thatcherism, to avoid coming
awkwardly face to face with the
present.
Sunak, on the other hand, gives
the impression of a man glancing
anxiously at his copy of Friedman’s
Sunak has little time as
investment decisions
and the election loom
Capitalism and Freedom and wringing
his hands. He is letting policy
proceed piecemeal in another
direction, but only with reluctance.
Unfortunately, he does not have time
to move so slowly. Neither
investment decisions nor elections
will wait. It would be better to
embrace change and find ways of
including elements of markets, such
as their decentralised decision-
making and grassroots innovation, to
the new requirement for government
intervention.
Accepting a larger role for the
government does not mean that one
has to start drawing up Maoist five-
year plans. But it does mean moving
on from the comfort of 1980s Tory
shibboleths. Truss may be out of
government, but her ghost is still
taunting her successor. He should
put it to rest.
red box
For the best analysis
and commentary on
the political landscape
24
Comment
These days anyone can pose as a serious thinker
As Russell Brand has proved, it’s not hard to find an audience for half-witted intellectualising
James
Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
I T
moved to London in the midst of
Russell Brand’s surreal pomp as a
public intellectual. Half of the
capital’s bus stops advertised his
political treatise/extended brain
fart, Revolution. At every turn, my
attempts to begin a politically
engaged adult life ran up against the
discouraging obstacle of Brand. I
would open my New Statesman to
find that Brand was its guest editor.
Or switch on Newsnight to discover
an exasperated Jeremy Paxman
trying to establish exactly when and
how the promised revolution was
going to occur.
When Ed Miliband turned up in
Brand’s kitchen to try to explain that
democracy was a good thing, I
dutifully tuned in and wondered
whether the question hadn’t been
settled already. All this gave me a
somewhat confused impression of the
nation’s intellectual life (if I wanted
to get into the business of social and
political commentary, would I have
to grow my hair like that too?).
At a distance of ten years, I
understand better what was going on.
Confronted with the democratising
forces of social media and the anti-
establishment spirit surging in the
aftermath of the 2008 financial crash,
“the mainstream media” (to use
Brand’s scoffing formulation) was
panicking about its elitism, privilege
Janice Turner Notebook
Star-struck
leftie media
gave Brand
a free pass
T
he Russell Brand saga has
transported me back to his
Noughties heyday, when
newly launched lads’ mags
Nuts and Zoo had taken
porn from the top shelf to right
beside the till, with “win a boob job
for your girlfriend” and how to break
down her objections to anal sex. At
the Edinburgh Fringe I sat through
endless male stand-ups making jokes
such as Jimmy Carr’s classic: “Q:
What do nine out of ten people
enjoy? A: Gang rape.” Meanwhile
300 lap-dancing clubs had popped
up on high streets across the land
because in 2003 the Labour
government loosened licensing laws.
Objecting to all this was bitterly
hard: you’d be labelled a humourless
prude or compared to the Viz
character Millie Tant. Lighten up,
babe, it’s just a bit of fun! A lads’ mag
editor, a lifelong leftie, accused me of
“imposing outmoded sexual politics
on a world that doesn’t fit any more”.
and declining audiences. Brand
played Rasputin to a nervous
establishment: an oversexed holy
fool whose grotesque behaviour was
imagined to be proof of his mystical
connection to “the people”. If he
lacked a coherent political analysis
he at least appeared to possess
“relevance”. His ignorance was proof
of his authenticity.
Brand was not prescient about
much. Despite all the publicity, his
revolution failed to arrive. The
predictions he makes on his
YouTube channel (UFOs are coming,
Bill Gates will seize control of food
production, etc) are . . . tenuous. But
in one respect he was a prophetic
figure: Brand was among the first
Social media privileges
the cult of personality
over complex thought
symptoms of the cheapening of
modern public debate. Political
commentary was hardly Brand’s
most grotesque alleged transgression
but it is one worth dwelling on.
Thanks to social media, anybody
can have a go at establishing
themselves as a serious thinker. Brand
is hardly the only comedian who
yearns to evolve — like some sinister
Pokémon — into an intellectual. The
Australian comic Hannah Gadsby
recently curated an exhibition on
Picasso (gratifyingly panned by
critics). The illusionist Derren Brown
has moved into philosophy. Nish
Kumar has a politics podcast. Ricky
Gervais has smugly installed himself
as a partisan of enlightenment and
Labour politicians looked puzzled
when I asked why they’d pimped the
sex industry into horrified
communities. When I asked Carr in
a 2011 interview if he liked rape gags,
he replied: “I like the ones I write.”
Into that vacuum roared Russell
Brand. And, of course, right-wing
tabloids, misogynist men’s mags and
TV executives adored and enabled
him: he made headlines, and a lot of
people a lot of money.
What shocked me most about
Noughties culture was the
silence of the left. Far from
denouncing lads’ mags, a new
“sex positive” feminism
emerged that
internalised their
values. It saw the
rapacious sex industry
as empowering and
pandered to the unbound
desires of men like Brand.
Then Brand discovered
that spouting Thomas
Piketty pieties gained him
even wider adulation. He
was crowned, in George
Monbiot of The
Guardian’s words, “the
best thing that’s
happened to the left
for years”. Woke bros
— who had always
dismissed feminism as a
middle-class distraction
from class politics or a brake
reason. None of these figures have
any claim to expertise other than
their fame. But, as we have learnt,
social media privileges personality
over complex thought.
Down in the most squalid depths of
the intellectual food chain the appeal
of crass pundits such as the GB News
regulars Sophie Corcoran and Darren
Grimes stems precisely from their
ignorance.
To some 21st-century audiences,
being instructed in a complex issue
by an expert is a patronisingly
hierarchical experience. A certain
kind of viewer feels most comfortable
when the commentator is just as
badly informed as they are.
The state of that amorphous
phenomenon, “public discourse”, is
not merely a fetish of self-important
newspaper columnists. It is — without
wishing to get too excruciatingly
pompous about it — important to
democracy. Wranglings on Twitter/X
and in magazines inform legislation:
witness the speed with which the
banning of the American XL bully
dog has gone from the obsession of a
few journalists to the subject of a
speech by the prime minister.
Many such arguments are
ephemeral distractions but some
become part of a nation’s history: the
Dreyfus affair is a defining feature of
France’s 19th-century experience,
just as the debate in Britain over “the
two cultures” (as CP Snow termed
the sciences and the arts) is a crucial
part of our postwar story.
Conspicuously absent in modern
discourse are public intellectuals of
the sort I grew up reading, watching
and listening to: Mary Beard,
Richard Dawkins, John Carey. All
on their own personal pleasures —
saw nothing to dislike in him. Not his
lurid 2007 memoir in which he spat in
a woman’s face, mistreated prostitutes
and hinted at even worse, nor his
misogynist stand-up material. When
he and Jonathan Ross humiliated
Andrew Sachs’s granddaughter
Georgina Baillie again, live on air,
Marina Hyde, of The
Guardian, dismissed it as
a confected Daily Mail
outrage and said Baillie,
who was merely seeking
an apology, should stop
droning on. (Hyde
apologised this week.)
Her reaction
epitomises the hard left’s
noxious goodies v
baddies mindset: Brand
was The Guardian’s guy
(thus excused censorship)
so his victim therefore
must be a right-wing
stooge. Brand’s misdeeds
were public, his lecherous
sexism around female
staff discomforting, dark
rumours were starting to
fly. Yet fame thinly
gilded with socialism
gave him a seat next to
the editor Alan
Rusbridger at a
Guardian news
conference, top billing
at its public events, a
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
academic experts and masters of
their fields whose books will be read
for decades. And all now over 65. No
younger generation of comparable
influence has risen to replace them.
This is partly because of the grisly
influence of social media but it is
also because universities are
abandoning their responsibility to
public life.
The spirit of nervous consensus
that prevails on modern campuses
means that academics are reluctant
to take controversial positions. Most
younger lecturers are too insecurely
employed, underpaid and crushed
by bureaucracy to risk their fragile
careers in public debate. Their lives
are ruled by the introverted
preoccupations of modern academia:
meeting arcane targets, publishing
in obscure journals, acquiring
exclusive jargon.
University vice-chancellors are no
doubt delighted to get plenty of free
labour and reassuring intellectual
conformity from their staff but these
things come at the cost of a public
service that universities should be
performing: leading and informing
our intellectual life. Dawkins was in
his early thirties when he published
The Selfish Gene. His modern-day
successor is almost certainly
drowning in grant applications and
fretting about the rent.
And so public discourse is in the
worst possible hands: comedians,
tweeters and assorted grifters.
Journalists have their place but mine
is inevitably a profession of generalists.
Our all-too complex age demands
brave expert voices more urgently
than any other. Instead, we are left
with the heirs of Russell Brand.
regular column, star-struck bro hugs
from Owen Jones and obsequious
blurbs for his books.
The merest whisper of racism or
homophobia and Brand would have
been shunned. But he was only
offensive about women, so wilful
blindness melded with political
expediency and those who pride
themselves in defending the
vulnerable gave a cunning abuser
a free pass.
Beware false prophets
T
he other lesson from this affair
is one I’ve practised my whole
life: never trust messianic men.
(Nor women, although these are
rarer.) If a guy claims to have all the
answers, if he cares more about the
sound of his own voice than the
cause he espouses, if he acts like
normal niceties (personal hygiene,
table manners, saying thank you) are
only for the little people, if he speaks
of himself in the third person, has an
elaborate wellness routine, a beard
and/or man-bun, wears thumb rings,
cowboy boots or (biggest of all red
flags) a hat indoors, stand well back.
It will save you not only from bad
boyfriends and the thrall of cult
leaders but the false prophets of
Julian Assange, Jeremy Corbyn,
Andrew Tate and Russell Brand.
@victoriapeckham
Seaside towns hold
the key to solving
our housing crisis
Adam Hawksbee
he corner of the country
with the fastest-rising
house prices isn’t a London
borough or a leafy suburb.
It’s Barry, the south Wales
coastal town of Gavin & Stacey fame.
Its transformation might hold the
key to solving the housing crisis.
A decade ago, the residents of
Barry worked with the local council
and the foreign owners of run-down
docklands to hatch a plan. They
converted swathes of disused
industrial land on the shoreline into
a 2,000-home development complete
with schools, colleges, shops and
cafés. Now, young families and
Cardiff commuters are flocking to
the seaside town, kick-starting the
turnaround of an otherwise
struggling area.
What worked for Barry can work
for Britain. The rise of hybrid working
means people are willing to tolerate
longer commutes for a few days a
week, looking for attractive family
homes and welcoming towns in which
to put down roots. Former industrial
sites around the coast could, with
some government investment and co-
ordination, become prime real estate.
Many are within an hour’s drive, tram
or train ride of a city.
The coast’s biggest asset is obvious:
the natural beauty of the seaside.
Residents in seaside towns repeatedly
told my think tank, Onward, that the
thing that made them most proud of
their area was its beaches, parks and
sea views. One South Shields
resident boasted to me that his patch
was “the Algarve with a fleece”.
But in recent decades, coastal towns
have suffered from decline. Our
research shows these communities
are poorer, more likely to experience
crime, and have an older and sicker
population. In the early 2000s they
were growing in line with inland
areas. But they have been badly hit by
the triple whammy of the recession,
Brexit disruption and the pandemic,
which ravaged areas historically
reliant on manufacturing and
tourism. A new wave of coastal homes
would bring welcome investment to
areas that badly need it.
A bold programme to build coastal
housing is a political no-brainer for
the government. They can build
much-needed homes without
touching the green belt, in a way that
regenerates left-behind areas and
supports struggling families. With the
stroke of a pen, Michael Gove, the
levelling-up secretary, could launch a
scheme via his department and
Homes England that would unlock
new sites and bring in investors.
Brightly coloured posters of Britain’s
coast are often found in vintage shops,
promoting holidays in Scarborough
and Blackpool. These towns can be
aspirational and prosperous once
again — but only with a bold move
from the government.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
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At last, we’re hearing some honesty on net zero
In extending Johnson’s fanciful deadline the PM is squaring with voters and putting Labour on the spot about its plans
Iain
Martin
@iainmartin1
W
ho could possibly
have predicted that
a date plucked out
of the air by Boris
Johnson to please
his green wife and her friends
would end up causing so much
trouble?
When in late 2020 the prime
minister at the time, never a details
man, announced that the ban on
sales of new petrol and diesel cars
would be brought forward to 2030 it
was a classic piece of Johnson
boosterism. Thumbs aloft, he
declared Britain would race ahead
of the EU and get to the destination
five years before Brussels and
ten years ahead of Britain’s original
2040 target.
Now back it goes to 2035 and Rishi
Sunak, having to clear up Johnson’s
mess, is getting the thumbs down
from green critics who say his
decision to delay climate change
targets is a betrayal and a disaster
for the planet.
This is nonsense, I’m afraid. Not
only has the prime minister opened a
proper divide between the two main
parties, creating choice going into
next year’s general election, he has in
the process done something
unorthodox and pleasing. Sunak has
decided to start telling the country
the truth about the complexities of
net zero and the need to balance
getting there with having sufficient
energy to power prosperity.
Although cleaner energy is a
terrific concept, it is going to take
decades to achieve and it depends in
part on storage capacity and
technology that is in its early stages.
In the interim we are going to need a
lot of oil and gas, and new small-
scale nuclear plants.
That pragmatic insight seems to be
what powered Sunak’s decision to
Tories will claim that
Labour will force us to
switch to electric cars
adjust course. No 10 also became
convinced that the country is just
not ready for the scale of the
changes required, which is why we
are promised a proper plan to
develop the critical national
infrastructure required. We’ll see.
In his speech yesterday afternoon,
Sunak tasked ministers with
speeding up an overhaul of the
national grid. It means, he says,
reforming the planning system to
ensure large-scale wind power
developments get plugged into the
system way faster, rather than
waiting in a queue behind much
smaller developments that deliver
less electricity.
Naturally there are political
calculations involved, with an
election due at some point in the
next year or so and the desperate
Conservatives trailing by at least 20
points in the polls.
On net-zero policy many voters
are, as one pollster describes it,
“cakeist”. That is, we share the
Johnson position of being in favour
of having cake and eating it. Policies
to get to net zero are popular, but
show us the price of a decent electric
vehicle or a heat pump and our
enthusiasm tends to cool.
With that in mind, Tory strategists
want to create dividing lines with
Labour, emphasising to consumers
the potential costs. Sunak and his
colleagues will say Labour is the
party that wants to force you to
switch to an electric car before it is
affordable, while simultaneously
killing off gas boilers at high speed
and making you get a heat pump
installed by Ed Miliband, the most
pro-net-zero member of the Labour
shadow cabinet.
This presents the opposition with a
fascinating dilemma ahead of next
year’s election. Even if Miliband
cannot see it, the hard-headed
realists in the shadow cabinet, such
as the election campaign chief Pat
McFadden, will surely spot and seek
to avoid the trap the Tories are
attempting to set.
Expect a robust squabble in
Labour about how to respond,
especially with trade union leaders
such as the GMB’s general-secretary
Gary Smith taking a more realistic
position. While Smith believes
climate change is real, he says
There is considerable
risk in taking his new
approach, of course
correctly that policy must be
balanced to protect employment and
the security of energy supply.
It is a position that is now not that
far removed from Sunak’s new
stance. That is what makes this
week’s development so interesting.
At last there is a chance that the
country will get to a credible and
more reasonable national policy
position, one that finds a way
between the fanatics who think we
are going to fry and those who deny
the climate is changing.
There is a considerable element of
risk involved for Sunak in his new
approach, of course. The most green
Tory MPs have already attacked him.
25
Comment
Even some of those Tories who
approve of the move will see this
purely in terms of electoral
calculation and conclude that it is
futile because nothing can save the
party from the kicking that voters
have been waiting to give them.
There was also strong criticism
from the car giant Ford yesterday
after news of the new deadline
leaked. But motor manufacturers
are not united on the subject: several
are closer to the government’s
position. Presumably they fear, as
Sunak does, an influx of cheap
electric vehicles flooding the market
in the rush to 2030, making Britain
too dependent on China, the primary
source of imports. “This delay gives
us a bit of time for us and our allies
to build up capacity,” a source
in No 10 said.
Indeed, that leads me to introduce
another possibility that might be
considered outlandish in these
feverish times, particularly in the
context of an election coming.
Perhaps Sunak is motivated by
thinking this is the right thing to do
economically and geopolitically.
“There is a realism here,” adds the
No 10 source, drawing an implied
contrast with Johnson. “We are not
going to just name a date with no
idea how to do it.”
After years of Johnson and other
leaders not facing up to the realities,
that, at least, is refreshing.
26
Letters to the Editor
Net zero retreat
Sir, If all parties had stuck to
engineering reality in their approach
to net zero by 2050, we would have
made steadier progress on a longer
timescale, and not had the violent
mid-course corrections we are seeing
now (“Sunak set for retreat on climate
promises”, Sep 20). What use will
many electric cars be without the
extra electricity (whether green or
not) needed to run them? About two
thirds of our existing grid capacity
will be needed to power electric
ground transport, so we should only
be introducing electric cars at the
same rate as the green grid capacity
increases. Unless of course, there is a
hidden agenda of major social change
with respect to reducing mobility.
Michael Kelly, FRS, FREng
Emeritus Prince Philip professor of
technology, Cambridge University
Sir, You report that Rishi Sunak is
“poised to water down some of the
government’s biggest net zero
commitments”. That our planet is
warming and that humans are
responsible for this are facts that Mr
Sunak is aware of, so this is a purely
political move. It is an obvious
attempt to raise the poll ratings of the
Conservative Party in preparation for
next year’s general election.
The irony of short-term gains for
long-term losses is perhaps lost on
him as far as climate change is
concerned. However, for those much
younger than me who will have to live
with the consequences of his changes,
this about-turn will not be forgotten.
He may feel he needs to do this to
save his premiership but the alienation
of younger voters may well destroy
the future of the Conservative Party.
Dr Scott Fraser
Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne
Slippery customers
Sir, Sue Pheasey (letter, Sep 20) writes
that it is acceptable for guests to take
hotel toiletries from bedrooms because
they are included in the price. That is
the case for the small disposable
bottles, which are now being phased
out by many businesses for ethical
reasons. However, wrenching large
bottles of refillable Molton Brown
products off the bathroom walls is
simply stealing. When confronted with
the warning of an impending credit
card charge, the usual reaction is one
of affront and denial.
Carolyn Armstrong
Director, Headland Hotel, Newquay
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feedback@thetimes.co.uk
‘Irresponsible’ strike by hospital consultants
Sir, Daniel Finkelstein’s article
(“Doctors’ irresponsible strike cannot
succeed”, Sep 20) overlooks three
glaring issues affecting junior doctors
and consultants. First and foremost,
the longstanding and steadily
worsening workforce shortages — the
single biggest contributor to poor staff
morale — which place all those still
working in the NHS under increasing
pressure to see more patients than
they can safely manage, and lead to
more and more eventually deciding
they have had enough. Second, the
steadily increasing number of junior
doctors and consultants abandoning
the NHS for work in other healthcare
systems, which gives the lie to his
claim that NHS consultants are better
off than their peers in many other
jurisdictions (both he and the
Nuffield Trust omit to mention
Australia and Canada, two of the
main destinations for doctors seeking
better pay, from their analysis).
Finally, contrary to his claim that
“consultants have not done worse
than anyone else in the top wage
bracket” over the past decade, the pay
erosion that junior doctors and
consultants have suffered has been
significantly greater than that in the
private sector, as a slew of data from
the Office for National Statistics
Art of ageing well
Sir, Further to Alice Thomson’s article
(“Sweden can teach us the art of
ageing well”, comment, Sep 20), as
many Silver Line callers tell us, many
older people in Britain feel extremely
lonely, and many are further isolated
by the digital revolution. If only we
had a Minister for Older People we
might be able to follow Sweden’s
example and enjoy a happy, proactive
third age. Instead our aging
population has been described as the
“graph of doom”, and older people are
seen as a cluster of problems split
between government departments
and never to be solved. Perhaps we
could do a deal: if the next
government gives us a minister to
protect and advocate for us, we’ll give
up our triple lock.
Dame Esther Rantzen
President, the Silver Line Helpline
Sir, The vision of ageing well in
Sweden painted by Alice Thomson is
one we would like to see replicated in
the UK. However, we need to see
significant societal change to achieve
this. Ageism remains prevalent in the
TRIUMPH OF
SCOTTISH
SHEEPDOG
from the times september 21, 1923
The International Sheep Dog
Society’s championship was won at
Knavesmire today by Mr George P
Brown, of Oxton, with his dog Spot.
This is the first time the
championship has been won by a
Scottish competitor, and the first
time it has been won by a hired
shepherd. Spot, a dog 33 months old,
was bred by Mr Brown himself.
There had been one or two very fine
performances during the day, but
Spot’s, which came last of all, was so
obviously supreme that the applause
was enthusiastic, and a good many
people rushed out to congratulate
confirms. To continue providing
universal care free at the point of use
and based on clinical need, the NHS
urgently needs more capacity, which
means more staff. That will only be
achieved by offering better pay and
working conditions.
Oliver Boney
Consultant anaesthetist, University
College Hospital, London
Sir, I have every sympathy with the
aims of many of my striking junior
and senior colleagues who mostly are
concerned for patient welfare and the
need to recruit and retain healthcare
staff of all types. I accept that the
BMA has been woefully inadequate at
negotiating pay and conditions over
the past decade. However, death is
permanent and is not just a
theoretical possibility. People have
and will die because of these strikes.
How my colleagues can accept this as
a justifiable means to an end is
beyond me. I am proud that neither of
my children who are consultants have
joined these strikes, and nor have I.
Dr John Barnes
Consultant physician, Truro
Sir, It is not consultants who are on
strike, it is consultants who are
members of the BMA. The latter is,
workplace, there is a paucity of
flexible working available and too
many older workers are forced out of
employment before their time: too
few employers recognise the benefits
of recruiting and retaining older
workers. Our health as a country is
declining. Too many people are
fighting a losing battle to remain well
enough to work into their late fifties
and sixties. People in this country can
expect the onset of poor health when
they are 63, and the poorest have up
to 19 fewer years of good health than
the richest. Swedes live longer than
Britons and live longer in good health.
Until we level out these inequalities,
the vision of a Swedish retirement is
nothing more than a pipe dream.
Dr Carole Easton
CEO, Centre for Ageing Better
Reform of GCSEs
Sir, I appreciate Katharine
Birbalsingh’s anxiety expressed in her
interview (news, Sep 16) with Nicola
Woolcock, about how reducing or
replacing GCSEs might increase
educational inequity, but it is
troubling logic to affirm that because
Mr Brown on a certain victory. The
weather was stormy and chilly, but a
good deal better than yesterday, and
good enough to allow a large
concourse of people a sight which
doubtless gladdened the heart of Mr
James Reid of Airdrie, the energetic
secretary and treasurer, and his
assistants.
The championship course is
different from the qualifying course of
the previous day. Each dog has not
five, but 20 sheep to manage. They
are unpenned in two lots of ten each,
and when the dog has found one far-
off lot and brought them to a
specified place, he must leave them
there and go to find and bring up the
other ten. One was struck by the
difficulty some dogs had in finding
the sheep and how close to them a
dog could come without detecting
them. When this outrun goes wrong
it is a heartbreaking sight. When it
goes triumphantly right, as it did with
Spot, there is a masterly certainty
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Letters to the Editor should be sent to
letters@thetimes.co.uk or by post to
1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
and always has been, a dog whistle for
the profession’s malcontents. Within
my network, very few colleagues are
on strike. Any anger within the
profession has more to do with the
relentless pressure felt by frontline
services in the face of an ageing
population, overwhelmed primary
care services and inadequate
provision of social care. The BMA is
misrepresenting the profession in
reducing the issue to financial reward.
Dr Patrick Sharp
Consultant (recently retired),
Southampton
Sir, When I was asked to endorse a
passport copy for the son of a
colleague recently, a list of suitable
trusted persons was given, namely:
solicitor, teacher, bank manager,
police officer, dentist. Doctor was
omitted. Has our standing in the
public eye fallen so low already?
Dr Mary Crone
Retired consultant dermatologist,
Mortimer, Berks
Sir, Perhaps the NHS should consider
training more orthopaedic surgeons
to treat all the consultants who are
shooting themselves in the foot today.
John Ramage
Consultant physician, Winchester
some schools cannot avoid the
problematic, stress-inducing series of
exams, none should. While schools
will have very different approaches,
pace and timelines, both the
independent and maintained sectors
largely agree that reform is required.
The government now needs to heed
the educationalists (including those
advising The Times Education
Commission) who have decried
GCSEs as unfit for contemporary
purposes for many years.
Schools should not have to take
things into their own hands, but they
are not wrong to do so. The academic
leaders of Latymer and Bedales have
been visionary and brave, and we
need more of these qualities in the
committees that determine our
national assessment and curriculum.
Jenny Brown
Head, City of London School for Girls
Pick of the week
Listen to The Times letters editor read
out the best of the week’s
correspondence just after 8.20am
today on Times Radio Breakfast
DAB radio, online, smart speaker and app
about it that is fascinating.
The pleasure of watching grows
upon one. Far too soon does one
begin to think that one understands,
and even to try assigning marks on
one’s own account. But there is this
to be pleaded in excuse. The people
about one are so keen and so
knowing in their sport that they
gladly share their knowledge and
give meaning to every detail. I hope
that nothing I may have written
yesterday gave the impression that
these marvellous dogs are mean to
look at. On the show bench they
could be nowhere, but Mr Roberts’s
dog Juff, from Wales, who won the
prize for the best type of dog, had
decided claims to beauty, and so had
some others.
The scene at the close of the
meeting was a little marred, but by
no means ruined, by a storm of rain.
thetimes.co.uk/archive
National Trust’s eco
investment strategy
Sir, The claim in your headline on
Jawad Iqbal’s Thunderer (Sep 20) that
the National Trust has been “left
counting the cost of political vanity”
indicates a misunderstanding of the
trust. It is not a political organisation,
it is a 128-year-old charity that uses
all its assets, including its investment
portfolio, to meet its charitable aims,
including care for nature and
heritage. We will not meet our aims
by reacting to short-term investment
fluctuations or to short-term political
concerns. Depressing though the
news is about weakening political
resolve around net zero, politics is not
our concern here. Protecting nature
and heritage, and therefore fighting
climate change, is.
Hilary McGrady
Director-general, National Trust
Off the rails
Sir, Matthew Parris wonders if the
need for railway trains running on
tracks will be superseded by road
vehicle “trains” guided by GPS
navigation (notebook, Sep 20). The
reason for using rails has little to do
with controlling the direction of the
train and everything to do with the
power needed to haul the load. Steel
wheels running on steel rails have a
much lower rolling resistance than
pneumatic tyres on a road surface.
Dr Ian Pearce, CEng, MIMechE
Great Ayton, N Yorks
Whistling lament
Sir, Whistling (leading article, Sep 20)
used to be the way in which
pickpockets were alerted to the
approach of a policeman, and in
Burlington Arcade in Piccadilly,
where whistling is prohibited for that
reason, impressively dressed beadles
still enforce the ban. In the 1980s one
such beadle admonished a whistler
only to find out that it was Paul
McCartney — who was immediately
granted the freedom to whistle in the
arcade for the rest of his life.
Peter Sergeant
Hathern, Leics
Sir, No discussion of whistling in
movie themes should omit Ennio
Morricone’s scoring of the Dollar
trilogy. Who can forget the haunting
opening bars of A Fistful of Dollars?
Tom Stubbs
Surbiton, Surrey
Winking organist
Sir, I can understand David Williams’s
frustration with facial recognition
software (letters, Sep 18 & 19) but as a
church organist, when both hands and
feet are occupied I rely on facial
gestures to turn music pages on my
laptop. If I twitch my mouth to the
right it turns the page forward, and if
to the left, backward. The same is
supposed to be true of each eye but the
software doesn’t recognise my winking.
Laura Lockwood
Seaton, Devon
I’ve been worse
Sir, Carol Midgley writes that the
British response to an inquiry after
one’s health is: “I’ve been worse, I
suppose” (Times2, Sep 20). If only it
were. The stock response nowadays
seems to be “I’m good”, to which one is
always tempted to respond “At what?”
Stephen Fowler
Boxted, Essex
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 2GM
Daily Universal Register
UK: UCL publishes research arguing that
analysis of how Covid-19 variants respond to
human immune responses could help in
identifying potential pandemic viruses.
Nature notes
A small party of
birds were foraging
for seeds in the high
hedge. To keep in
touch with each
other they called
out constantly.
These contact calls were delivered sotto
voce but had a musicality that could only be
made by a linnet. Sure enough, one of the
party rose into view, feeding on some ash
keys — a linnet. Just as its autumn voice is a
subdued version of the songbird’s full
chiming melodies heard in spring, the
linnet’s usually striking appearance was
rather dowdy. The bold crimson on its crest
and breast had faded to a few streaks; its rich
brown was grey. The birds were enduring
the annual moult. jonathan tulloch
Birthdays today
Sir Curtly Ambrose,
pictured, cricketer, played
98 Test matches for
West Indies, 60; Ian
Albery, theatre
impresario, honorary
vice-president, Sadler’s
Wells Foundation, chief
executive, Sadler’s Wells (1994-2002), 87;
Marcus Binney, architectural historian,
president, Save Britain’s Heritage, 79; Jerry
Bruckheimer, producer, the Pirates of the
Caribbean film series, 80; Lord (Harry)
Carter of Haslemere, government lawyer,
65; Ethan Coen, film-maker, No Country for
Old Men (2007), 66; Shirley Conran, writer,
Superwoman (1975), 91; Don Felder,
musician, the Eagles (1974-2001), Hotel
California (1977), 76; Liam Gallagher, singer,
Oasis, Definitely Maybe (1994), 51; Chris
Gayle, cricketer, West Indies (2000-14), 44;
Ian Green, chief executive, Terrence Higgins
Trust (2016-Mar 2023), 58; Pedro Serrano,
EU ambassador to the UK, 62; Michael
Hirst, screenwriter, Vikings (2013-20), 71; Sir
Emyr Jones Parry, chairman, Wales
Millennium Centre (2010-16), and former
diplomat, 76; Nyree Kindred, swimmer,
two-time Paralympic gold medallist (2004),
43; Stephen King, author, The Shining (1977),
76; Nick Knowles, TV presenter, DIY SOS
(1999-2018), 61; Simon Mayo, presenter, BBC
radio (1982-22), and writer, Tick Tock (2022),
65; Juanjo Mena, chief conductor, BBC
Philharmonic (2011-18), 58; Bill Murray,
actor, Ghostbusters (1984), Lost in Translation
(2003), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), 73;
Ben Proud, swimmer, two-time gold
medallist, World Championships (2017,
2022), five-time gold medallist,
Commonwealth Games (2014, 2018, 2022),
29; Edgars Rinkevics, president of Latvia,
50; Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia
(2007-10, 2013, now ambassador of Australia
to the US), writer, The Avoidable War: The
Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between
the US and Xi Jinping’s China (2022), 66; Ian
Stuart, chief executive, HSBC UK Bank, 60;
Joe Wicks, personal trainer and TV
presenter, The Body Coach, 38.
On this day
In 1931 the Bank of England and the
government agreed to suspend the gold
standard, which was linked to the value of
sterling. Confidence in sterling had collapsed.
The last word
“When will our consciences grow so tender
that we will act to prevent human misery
rather than avenge it?” Eleanor Roosevelt,
widow of President Franklin D Roosevelt,
from her My Day newspaper column, 1946
Grasping the Nettle
Rishi Sunak is right to recognise reality and push back damaging and unachievable
deadlines on the green transition. But net zero by 2050 should remain the goal
Those disappointed by Rishi Sunak’s sensible
decision to delay the deadlines that set the pace of
the British economy’s transition to net zero should
not blame the prime minister. It was Boris Johnson,
playing as statesman as the United Kingdom
prepared to host the Cop26 climate summit, who
rushed forward by a decade the ban on new petrol
and diesel vehicles. It was Theresa May, in the final
weeks of her premiership, who led the desultory 90
minutes of parliamentary debate that waved a
legally binding 2050 net zero target on to the
statute book. Both decisions were symptomatic
of a political culture that has persistently failed to
reckon with the true costs of a policy that will
fundamentally reshape the Britain’s economic
landscape.
To criticise Mr Sunak’s predecessors is not
to question the wisdom of the government’s
commitment to achieving net zero by 2050.
Indeed, that is a distinction Mr Sunak was careful
to draw as he levelled with the public yesterday. To
walk away from the green agenda now endorsed
across the West would be a myopic act of political
cynicism, not to mention economic self-harm.
Any fair reading of Mr Sunak’s address must
acknowledge that he did no such thing. Instead he
confronted a truth politicians of all parties have
Brand Mismanagement
The BBC has been hypocritical in its handling of allegations against Russell Brand
Allegations that the comedian Russell Brand raped
a woman and sexually assaulted or emotionally
abused other victims — first published last weekend
after a four-year investigation by this newspaper,
The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches —
are deeply troubling. This is not just because of their
inherent seriousness, but also because of mounting
evidence that Mr Brand’s alleged transgressions
were part of an established pattern of unprofessional
behaviour that was widely noticed and should have
been stopped. Instead, he seems to have been
allowed to abuse his position of power in plain
sight, with his often predatory and inappropriate
behaviour an open secret within the organisations
employing him. He has denied the claims.
As the national broadcaster, paid for via a
compulsory licence fee, the BBC must prove that it
takes credible accusations about this abuse of power
seriously. Urgent questions must be answered
as to how historical complaints about Mr Brand’s
behaviour were handled. With this aim in mind,
Tim Davie, the corporation’s director-general,
has rightly announced an internal inquiry which
“is to be totally transparent”. Some of Mr Brand’s
Suppressing negative thoughts may not be emotionally damaging after all
For many years, the received wisdom, in British
culture at any rate, about what to do when feeling
blue could be summed up as “think happy
thoughts instead”. Anxieties, worries, fears — all
should be suppressed in favour of “cracking on”,
“pulling your socks up”, “counting your blessings”,
take your pick. Over recent decades, as Freudian
ideas formed a new orthodoxy in mental health
treatment, such exhortations came to be seen as
not just facile, but dangerous. Negative thoughts,
the current consensus holds, must not be buried,
but confronted. Hiding anxiety makes it worse.
Now, however, a new study by scientists at the
neglected in favour of faddish radicalism: to lumber
working people with the costs of net zero is to
undermine the public consent that is so vital for
consensus on the environment. “There’s nothing
ambitious,” Mr Sunak said yesterday, “about
simply asserting a goal for a short-term headline
without being honest with the public about the
tough choices and sacrifices involved.” He is
correct. Mr Johnson, ever preoccupied with grands
projets in service of his own ambition, seized
upon the green agenda. But, ever since, ministers
have willed the ends without acknowledging the
sacrifices demanded by the means.
It is unjustifiable that the means — the ban on
petrol cars by 2030, the ban on gas boilers by 2035
— should burden most those of limited resources.
Britain is responsible for a tiny fraction of global
carbon emissions. Working people dependent on
petrol vehicles cannot be held responsible, still less
impoverished, for the sake of appearances. Mr
Sunak understands this is as much about social
justice as environmentalism. Hence his promise
of no new taxes on flying. It is also a question of
practicality. Owners of electric vehicles will know
from bitter experience that this country’s charging
infrastructure is woefully underdeveloped and
unready for the mass switch to them. Nor had
manifestly troubling behaviour is, however,
already a matter of public record. Broadcasts from
his time as a presenter on BBC Radio 2 reveal him
making derogatory remarks about a female news-
reader, describing her as “erotic” and saying he
would like to “go under the desk” while she was
reading the news. In another broadcast, Mr Brand
can be heard joking with Jimmy Savile about
ordering his personal assistant to give him a
“massage”. Added to this are accusations that Mr
Brand exposed himself in his radio studio and
urinated in front of production staff and guests. It
is also alleged that he used the BBC’s car service to
pick up a 16-year-old girl from her school at a time
when the pair were having a sexual relationship —
which she now alleges amounted to grooming.
This leaves serious questions for the BBC. It is
hardly encouraging that its response thus far has
been dilatory and ineffectual. When invited to
comment on the allegations about Mr Brand’s
behaviour in the week before their publication, the
broadcaster said assessing the issues was a
“challenge” since they concerned “a time period
from 15 to 20 years ago”. But after this the “challenge”
Happy Days
University of Cambridge argues the old ways may
have some merit after all. Volunteers were trained
to block, or at least de-vivify and de-intensify,
images and thoughts they found distressing.
When these participants’ mental health was
subsequently measured on various indices, it was
found to have improved. The findings suggest the
hugely optimistic possibility that a sunny, or at
least, a sunnier, disposition can be learnt.
While some lucky people may be born as
glass-half-full characters, it would be excellent
news if those who are naturally more doom-laden
could, with practice, become less so. After years
27
Leading articles
ministers set out precisely how they intended to re-
place the gas and oil boilers in inner-city and rural
homes with heat pumps, and the cost of doing so.
Delaying the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles
to 2035 not only aligns Britain with the EU, but buys
the industry time to ensure a smooth transition.
That assessment is not one shared by British
industry in its entirety. Some manufacturers, such
as Ford, accuse the government of undermining
investor confidence. They make a fair point. Mere
weeks have passed since Michael Gove, the levelling
up secretary, insisted that the 2030 deadline for
petrol vehicles was “immovable”. Mr Johnson’s
hubris notwithstanding, some 34 per cent of
British emissions now come from transport.
Ministers must ensure the additional time is used
to build charging infrastructure fit for the future.
It is now for Mr Sunak to make good on his
promise of achieving net zero by 2050 without
impoverishing those with too little to give. The
grants he promised to low-income households
unable to afford heat pumps are a good start. They
should be followed by investment in onshore wind
and nuclear. That, for all the outrage, will amount
to a more substantial legacy than Mr Johnson’s
hollow boosterism. The prime minister deserves
credit for grasping the green nettle.
evaporated as an internal inquiry was announced.
The BBC has also failed to observe its obligations
under the Freedom of Information Act in its
inadequate response to two disclosure requests. The
first concerned the history of internal complaints
about Mr Brand. The BBC refused to answer on the
pretext that doing so would compromise his “per-
sonal data”. It also refused to release complaints
made via its whistleblower hotline. That the BBC
has now committed to a “fully transparent investi-
gation” suggests these excuses were always flimsy.
A second FOI request about an internal report
from 2008, overseen by Mr Davie, into the on-air
treatment of the actor Andrew Sachs by Mr Brand
was acknowledged in February this year but then
ignored, putting the BBC in breach of its statutory
duty to respond within 20 working days.
The BBC trumpets its record as a fearless seeker
after truth and it is only too happy to punish a lack
of transparency in those it investigates. But, as in
the case of Huw Edwards, such openness is sadly
lacking when the corporation and its employees,
present and past, are the subjects of legitimate
journalistic inquiry. This is hypocrisy.
languishing as a mere platitude, “looking on the
bright side” might be a workable strategy for
alleviating some forms of mental ill-health.
The study is, admittedly, a small-scale one. Its
authors emphatically do not advocate a return to
the bad old days of “cheer up, it might never
happen”, still less the even worse, even older days
of “snap out of it!”. No one endorses that approach,
certainly not this newspaper, which has long cam-
paigned for mental ill-health to be de-stigmatised.
Talking and pharmacological therapies will always
have their place. But so might the notion that
judicious repression is not always such a bad thing.
28
World
Chaos and death in just
another sliver of war
Anthony Loyd reports
from a command post on
the Dnipro River
as a mission goes
terribly wrong
The speedboat pulled away from the
riverbank with five Ukrainian soldiers
crouched low inside, barely visible in
the moonlight. Yet as it moved along
the river, enemy eyes on the other side
watched its progress, planning the
men’s destruction.
Watching too that night, on a live
feed from a Mavic drone transmitted to
his command post in a nearby farm-
house, was a captain in his late twenties
with a handful of his men, all members
of a specialised Ukrainian intelligence
unit. This was his mission.
The improvised operations room was
small and dusty, with peeling beige
wallpaper, a table and sofa. A couple of
Polish assault rifles lay in one corner.
The captain sat at the table with a lap-
top, a tablet and radio handset beside
him, watching the drone feed.
What unfolded on the screen was no
huge battle, no triumph of arms, only
another bloody sliver of war: a recon-
naissance patrol, probing Russian posi-
tions on the eastern side of the River
Dnipro, and the moments of chaos and
violence that soldiers endure daily
along Ukraine’s 600-mile front line.
The plan was simple. “We’ve killed
about thirty Russians in the last few
days using drones,” the captain said
before the mission. “So I’m putting two
teams of my guys on to the island to see
if they can locate how far the Russians
have pulled back.”
At first all went smoothly. The speed-
boat left the west side of the river, held
by the Ukrainians, from a concealed
launch point. It dropped the first group
of soldiers on an island on the east side,
held in part by the Russians, under
cover of darkness, then repeated the
drop with another small group.
The next phase went well too. The
patrol — glowing figures who appeared
Kremlin boasts of booming relations with Tehran We will not
Iran
Marc Bennetts, Melanie Swan Dubai
Russia’s defence chief hailed a “new
level” in relations with Iran during a
visit that came as the Islamic Republic
approved a law to increase the maxi-
mum prison sentence for women who
refuse to wear headscarfs to ten years.
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence
minister, said that Moscow’s relations
with Tehran were booming despite
pressure from western countries. Iran
and Russia are two of the world’s most
heavily sanctioned countries.
“We are aiming at an entire range of
planned activities, despite opposition
from the United States and its western
allies,” Shoigu, 68, said after a meeting
almost celestial on the captain’s screen
— hid themselves in undergrowth to
escape the attention of any Russian
drones. They were diligent in their
work, pulling foliage over themselves
until their glow disappeared.
The captain grunted briefly in satis-
faction, and in the calm before the
storm he shared recent clips of his
drones killing Russian infantrymen on
the island.
Unlike the huge armoured and artil-
lery clashes across the blitzed land-
scapes further north, here in the lower
Dnipro valley the war is of small boats,
drone bombs, night raids, light infantry
and incursions as the Ukrainians seek
to gnaw away at Russian units on the
banks and islands of the Dnipro’s east-
ern side. The landscape is different too:
marshy and densely vegetated, crusted
by flood damage and fallen trees in the
aftermath of the summer’s Kakhovka
dam blast.
The unit’s drone footage from the
previous week was graphic: Russians in
a small boat were blasted and bombed;
a Russian soldier crawled through trees
as a grenade fell from a Mavic; another
lay ablaze in his observation post, his
flaming arm waving. “The Russians
made a mistake storing the ammuni-
tion in their position,” the captain ob-
served.
A little before dawn, as the light out-
side turned from black to grey, the
green figures on the captain’s drone
feed emerged from cover and began to
patrol forward. The island was a couple
of miles long and the Ukrainian patrol
was searching, not for a fight, but to
locate the Russian positions.
Soon the glowing figures found a
dead Russian. It seemed a positive sign:
if the Russians had left their dead there,
they must be far away.
It was anything but. The figures on
the screen suddenly scattered. The
radio chattered into life. A stressed and
breathless Ukrainian soldier called in a
contact report as gunfire crackled over
the air waves.
Two Ukrainian soldiers, scouts at the
front of the patrol, had come upon a
large group of Russian soldiers lying in
concealed positions. In the eruption of
in Tehran with Ali Akbar Ahmadian,
Iran’s top security official. “Sanctions
pressure on Russia and Iran shows its
futility, while Russian-Iranian inter-
action is reaching a new level.”
Shoigu also visited the Islamic Revo-
lutionary Guard Corps to see Iranian
missiles and drones. Russia took its first
delivery of Iranian-made drones last
August and has used them to attack
Ukrainian troops and cities.
The Kremlin is also seeking to boost
ties with North Korea. Kim Jong-un,
the North Korean dictator, visited
Russia last week for talks with Presi-
dent Putin that were thought to focus
on weapons supplies for the Kremlin’s
forces in Ukraine.
Shoigu was speaking as the Iranian
Russian-held territory
Ukrainian UKRAINE
counteroffensive
Dnipro River
Nova
Kherson
Kakhovka
Five miles
gunfire both Ukrainians fell, badly
wounded. As their comrades tried to
reach them, another soldier was killed.
“They will hit us from behind, they will
hit us from behind . . .” a soldier shouted
over the radio, competing with the
crackle of machinegun fire.
“We’ve got a 200,” someone called,
using the code word for a death.
More soldiers were wounded. The
captain ordered his men to break from
contact and withdraw towards the
bank, calling in fire from a mortar to
cover them. The drone feed was mo-
mentarily interrupted as a Mavic was
brought down by a Russian signal jam-
mer. Another Mavic took over. A
Ukrainian soldier lay incapacitated in
the undergrowth.
The two wounded scouts were call-
ing for help over the radios, insisting
there was a safe route to pull them back,
but there was confusion as to whether
they could be rescued, or whether the
Russians were forcing them at gun-
point to lure their comrades into a trap.
“I could see Russian muzzle flashes
just ten metres away from where they
lay. It could have been a trap,” the cap-
tain said later.
It got worse. The captain ordered his
quick reaction force, ready and waiting
in another speedboat, to cross the river
and lay down some covering fire. Yet no
sooner had the speedboat set off than it
was raked with machinegun fire from
concealed Russian positions along the
bank. Two Ukrainian soldiers fell dead
into the river.
For a moment a drone hovered over
the boat as it lay listless among the
reeds. There was no movement from
Sergei Shoigu has bought weapons
from Iran for Russia’s war in Ukraine
parliament voted to clamp down on
women who defy the country’s manda-
tory headscarf rules. Nationwide pro-
tests were provoked by the death a year
ago of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-woman
who died of severe head wounds after
V2 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
the remaining soldiers aboard; all but
one had been hit. The voices became
more desperate.
“The boat is hit!”
“F*** me, what’s going on? Tell me
what the f*** is going on!”
“Is anyone left alive on the boat?”
“Come and get us! Come and cover
us!”
“Is anyone coming my way? We’re
getting f***ing torn apart!”
As the voices and gunfire over the
radio entered the little room, doves
cooed in the morning light outside.
Sitting at the table, a lonely figure of
command, the captain began to unpick
the chaos of it all, calling in mortar fire
on the Russian trenches and ordering
help from another unit close at hand.
Yet only two men responded to the call
and moved forward to help his belea-
guered patrol: the rest stayed where
they were.
Soon, of the patrol’s ten men, one was
dead and five were wounded, some
mortally. For the quick-reaction force
in the boat, the casualties were even
worse.
The tempo of the fight rose then fell,
then finally dropped away. The captain
got all his men back eventually: the liv-
ing, the dead and the wounded. He
made sure there was payback too, call-
ing in a final barrage of mortar fire on to
the Russian trenches, which over the
past few days have been further hit by
repeated drone strikes. He even man-
aged to get the bodies of two soldiers
killed on the boat recovered from the
currents of the Dnipro.
Yet by the time the seriously wound-
ed had succumbed to their injuries, six
of the fifteen men involved in the oper-
ation were dead and five were hurt.
Among the dead was a national hero
who had been awarded Ukraine’s high-
est gallantry award for his courage
under fire.
Afterwards, I thought of Ernest
Shackleton’s musings about the loneli-
ness of command as I recalled the calm-
ness, under hideous pressure, of the
captain. But the most abiding impress-
ion was the terrible intimacy of being in
the company of strangers as they
watched their comrades die.
her arrest by the morality police for not
wearing her headscarf, or hijab, in what
be Europe’s
was deemed a proper manner.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran
called the new Chastity and Hijab Bill a
refugee camp,
form of “collective punishment” over
the protests, which are thought to have
been the biggest since the 1979 revolu-
vows Meloni
tion. The authorities have closed res-
taurants and shops for serving unveiled Italy
women. Women have also been denied
James Imam Milan
access to banks and education for ap-
pearing without a hijab. Giorgia Meloni has warned Europe not
The new law awaits review and final to treat Italy like a “refugee camp” after
approval by Iran’s guardian council, France sent soldiers, helicopters and
which is headed by the 96-year-old drones to man its border with the coun-
ultra-conservative cleric Ahmad Jan- try amid a surge in migrants.
nati. UN experts have described the bill “I will not allow Italy to become the
as a form of “gender apartheid”. refugee camp of Europe,” Meloni said
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
President
Zelensky
addressed the
UN Security
Council under
the stern gaze of
Sergey Lavrov,
the Kremlin’s
foreign minister.
Vassily Nebenzia,
the Russian UN
envoy, walked
out of the
meeting, left,
after referring to
Zelensky’s career
as a comedian
in New York, where she was due to
address the UN general assembly last
night, amid a deepening row with
France about who will house the new
arrivals. “We need to declare war
against people traffickers,” she said.
Italy is experiencing a boom in boat
arrivals from north Africa, with 130,620
people reaching the country’s shores
since January — twice the number of
the same period last year.
Chaotic scenes have erupted at over-
crowded reception centres, with hun-
dreds of migrants escaping from a centre
in Porto Empedocle in Sicily this week.
France’s interior minister, Gérald
Darmanin, told his counterpart in
Rome on Monday that France would
not take in migrants arriving on the
southern island of Lampedusa. “It
would be an error of judgment to say
migrants should be redistributed
around Europe and France,” he said.
Speaking on France’s TF1 channel on
Tuesday evening, Darmanin promised
to increase the number of police offi-
cers and gendarmes manning France’s
border with Italy from 500 to 700.
The town of Menton, on the French
Riviera near the Italian border, has re-
cently registered an influx of migrants,
and 120 extra military personnel had
been deployed, authorities in France’s
Alpes-Maritimes region told the Ansa
news agency.
Italian media have reported signs of
tightened security, with a helicopter
hovering above Ventimiglia, an Italian
border town where 400 migrants are
believed to be waiting for their chance
to cross. Border forces are also using
drones to monitor woodland.
Meloni faced more domestic pressure
yesterday from regional presidents over
plans to expand the country’s network
of detention centres from nine to 21.
Olá, your daughter’s prettier than you
Portugal
Isambard Wilkinson Madrid
Portugal’s president has been accused
of sexism after he suggested that a
woman’s low neckline exposed her to
catching the flu.
Meeting Portuguese emigrants in
Toronto, President Rebelo de Sousa, 74,
told two women: “The daughter is more
beautiful than the mother but the
daughter may yet catch the flu. Have
you noticed her cleavage?”
The backlash forced the conservative
president to defend himself. “It was not
a sexist comment; I didn’t think of it like
that,” he said. “Neither did the young
woman. It was not sexist at all.”
He added: “I told several people but
Europe’s rabbis find a new
home in cradle of Holocaust
Page 31
Zelensky tells UN
Russian veto is
causing deadlock
United States
Marc Bennetts
Paulina Olszanka Wroclaw
Will Pavia New York
President Zelensky has urged the
United Nations to strip Russia of its
right to a veto at the security council
following the Kremlin’s “criminal” war
in Ukraine.
Russia has been one of five perman-
ent members of the UN council since
1991, when it inherited the status from
the Soviet Union. The others are Brit-
ain, China, France and the United
States.
“Veto power in the hands of the
aggressor is what has pushed the UN
into a deadlock,” Zelensky told the
council yesterday. “It is impossible to
stop the war because all efforts are
vetoed by the aggressor or those who
condone the aggressor.”
Two days after Russia invaded last
year, it vetoed a security council resolu-
tion that would have demanded it with-
draw its troops and cease all attacks on
Ukraine. Western countries voted in fa-
vour of the resolution, while China ab-
stained. Russia also blocked a resolu-
tion last year condemning its illegal an-
nexation of four regions in eastern and
southern Ukraine.
Zelensky said: “Ukrainian soldiers
are now doing with their blood what the
UN security council should do with
their votes — stop aggression. The veto
should not serve as a weapon for those
obsessed with hatred and war.”
He spoke after President Duda of
Poland likened Ukraine to a “person
who is drowning and grasping at every-
thing”, disclosing a growing breach in
the friendship between the neighbour-
ing nations since the invasion.
“If a drowning person causes harm
and drowns us, he will not get help,”
Duda said. “So we have to look after our
own interests and we will do this effec-
tively and decisively.”
The Polish leader was speaking after
Ukraine said it would take legal action
against his country, as well as Slovakia
and Hungary, over unilateral bans on
President Rebelo de Sousa made the
remarks to a mother and her daughter
apparently only the comment to one
young woman was recorded.”
Criticism came from political rivals at
home. “We are in 2023. You don’t treat
a woman you don’t know by making a
joke about her weight. You don’t make a
29
TV series casts Chinese
as good guys of Africa
Page 32
their grain exports. The three countries
have banned the import of grain from
Ukraine because of fears of unrest
among their farmers.
A similar EU-wide ban was lifted last
week, with the European Commission
saying it was satisfied Ukrainian ex-
ports would no longer adversely affect
the EU market. The Polish embargo
was imposed a month before elections,
with the governing Law and Justice
party afraid its traditional supporters
might prefer smaller populist parties.
Zelensky, who was speaking in per-
son at the UN for the first time since the
invasion, said Russia had “illegally”
taken on the Soviet Union’s powers of
veto through “manipulations” after the
collapse of the communist state. He
said the veto was taken “by liars whose
job it is to whitewash aggression and
genocide”.
Stripping Russia of its veto raises
numerous obstacles and would face
almost certain opposition from China.
Beijing received its veto powers in 1971
after the UN voted to expel Taiwan and
hand its status as a permanent member
of the security council to China.
There were tensions before Zelensky
appeared. Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s
UN envoy, said allowing Ukraine’s
president to speak first would under-
mine the council’s authority. He added
that it would turn the UN session into a
“one-man stand-up show”, a reference
to Zelensky’s past as a comedian.
Moscow has also criticised large-
scale Nato exercises to be held next
year. The Steadfast Defender drills will
involve more than 40,000 troops, up to
700 aerial drills and at least 50 ships.
The proposal is the largest Nato mis-
sion since the Cold War, testing defence
plans from the Baltics to Poland and
Germany.
They are aimed at modelling Nato re-
actions to an invasion of Europe by an
enemy coalition headed by Russia.
Alexander Grushko, Russia’s deputy
foreign minister, said the drills were
“provocative” and an “aggressive” dem-
onstration of force aimed at exerting
pressure on Moscow.
joke about her cleav-
age [. . .] Sexism
kills us. It’s not fun-
ny,” said Isabel
Moreira, an MP
from the ruling
Socialist Party.
The president’s
remarks were com-
pared by some to the
forced kiss given by Luis
Rubiales to Jenni Hermoso on the
World Cup winners’ podium, which led
to the former Spanish football federa-
tion chief’s resignation. Asked last
month about Rubiales’s actions, Rebelo
de Sousa said that it was “a minor issue”
compared with the war in Ukraine.
30
World
Moscow brokers ceasefire in disputed Trump’
to striking
region after dozens killed in offensive factory pips
Azerbaijan
Marc Bennetts, Hannah Lucinda Smith
Separatist Armenian forces in the dis-
puted region of Nagorno-Karabakh
have agreed to ceasefire terms pro-
posed by Russia after dozens of people
were killed in a military offensive by
Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan began an attack on
Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday
following what it said were the deaths of
four of its soldiers in landmine blasts
that it blamed on Armenian “sabo-
teurs”. Its actions raised fears of a new,
full-scale war in the volatile region.
Ruben Vardanyan, the former head of
the separatist region’s government, said
that about 100 people had been killed
by Azerbaijani forces. A human rights
ombudsman in the region said at least
200 people had been killed and more
than 400 wounded in fighting.
Nagorno-Karabakh is international-
ly recognised as part of mainly Muslim
Azerbaijan but is governed by ethnic
Armenians, who are Christians. The
mountainous region has a population
of 120,000 people and is roughly the
size of Somerset.
The ceasefire came at talks between
separatist forces and the Russian
peacekeeping contingent in the region,
Moscow said. It stipulates the with-
50 miles
RUSSIA
GEORGIA Caspian
Sea
AZERBAIJAN
ARMENIA
Nagorno-
Yerevan Karabakh Baku
Lachin
corridor
IRAN
drawal of Armenian military units and
equipment from Nagorno-Karabakh,
which is known as Artsakh by Armeni-
ans. The separatists will also have to lay
down their arms in exchange for safe
passage, Azerbaijan said. Armenia has
denied that its troops are in the region.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed
that its peacekeepers in the region were
killed yesterday when their car was shot
at while returning from an observation
post near the village of Dzhanyatag. It
did not say how many people were in
the car. President Aliyev of Azerbaijan
had previously told Antony Blinken,
the US secretary of state, he would call
off the “anti-terrorist” operation only if
Armenian forces surrendered.
Be wary of visiting Canada, Modi warns Indians
Canada
Keiran Southern Surrey, British Columbia
Amrit Dhillon New Delhi
India has urged its citizens to be wary of
“hate crimes” when visiting Canada
after it was reported that the latter had
worked “very closely” with the US on
intelligence linking Indian agents to
the murder of a Sikh separatist.
Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime
minister, disclosed this week that his
country was investigating “credible
allegations” connecting India to the
murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Brit-
ish Columbia in June.
Nijjar, a prominent supporter of a
Sikh separatist movement seeking a
new homeland carved out of the state
s trip
Police in Yerevan, Armenia, monitor a protest against the offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, where civilians took shelter, below
of Punjab, was shot dead outside a tem-
ple in Surrey, a city of half a million
people between Vancouver and the
US border.
Delhi has denied that it was in-
volved, and there have been tit-for-
tat expulsions of senior diplomats.
A Canadian government
source has said that the
authorities had worked
“very closely” with the US
on the intelligence tying
India to the killing, as well
as on Monday’s public dis-
closure. Canada will share
its evidence “in due course”,
the source told Reuters.
Washington has said it sup-
ports Canada’s investigation.
Thousands of Armenians rushed to
an airport in Nagorno-Karabakh
where Russian peacekeepers were
based amid fears that Azerbaijani
troops would seek to ethnically cleanse
the region. Azerbaijan has denied any
plans to target civilians and has said Ar-
menians can remain in the area under
its rule.
An Armenian foreign ministry offi-
cial said that the history of conflict
between the two countries meant this
scenario was hard to imagine.
Hikmet Hajiyev, Azerbaijan’s presi-
dential adviser on foreign affairs, said
that the result of the 24-hour assault
was a “win-win” for both sides. Hajiyev
insisted the offensive was not a pre-
“We have been in close contact with our
Canadian colleagues about this,” a
senior State Department official
said. “We think it’s important there
is a full and open investigation, and
we would urge the Indian govern-
ment to co-operate.”
The incident has widened
the rift between Canada and
India, with Trudeau con-
fronting Narendra Modi,
the Indian prime minister,
over the issue at the G20
summit this month.
Trade talks between
Ottawa and New Delhi
Justin Trudeau tied India to
the killing of a Sikh separatist
2GM
planned operation but a response to-
land mine attacks against Azerbaijani
citizens.
Armenians in the region would be
offered Azerbaijani citizenship and
minority religious and linguistic
rights, Hajiyev added. That is an offer
that few, if any, are likely to take up,
however.
Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is
backed by Turkey, have fought two wars
over the region since both countries
gained independence from the Soviet
Union in 1991.
The most recent war came in 2020
and killed more than 6,500 people
before Moscow brokered a ceasefire
after 44 days.
have been halted, and Canada has
called off a trade mission next month.
Experts have said Trudeau must pro-
vide proof of the allegations.
“It’s just something that he said is a
‘credible allegation’, with no proof at
all,” Jasdip Singh, founder and chair-
man of the community group Sikhs of
America, told an event hosted by Wash-
ington’s Hudson Institute think tank.
India has warned its citizens travel-
ling to Canada to be wary of the possi-
bility of “hate crimes” against them due
to the heightened tensions.
“Threats have targeted Indian diplo-
mats and sections of the Indian com-
munity who oppose the anti-India
agenda,” the foreign ministry said in a
statement.
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Democrats
United States
Hugh Tomlinson Washington
Donald Trump will address striking car
workers in the battleground state of
Michigan next week, deepening concern
among Democrats that President Biden
has been outflanked by his Republican
rival in his battle to win back working-
class voters.
Trump will travel to Detroit to meet
United Auto Workers (UAW) members
who walked out at the weekend after
negotiations about a pay increase and
working hours broke down.
The strike is the first by the UAW
against all the “big three” American
carmakers at once.
A prolonged stand-off could threaten
Biden’s hopes of re-election amid
continued unhappiness among voters
at his handling of the economy. Biden
has touted himself as “the most pro-
union president in American history”
and has backed the UAW, urging bosses
at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis,
the owner of Chrysler, to give more to
their workers.
Trump’s speech in Detroit is seen by
Democrats as a cynical ploy to exploit
the strike and shore up blue-collar votes
for his campaign to take back the White
House next year. With a commanding
lead in the race for the Republican
presidential nomination, Trump is
already focusing on the election.
Some Democrats have voiced
frustration that Biden has been out-
manoeuvred by his rival. “Trump
scooped us,” a Democratic strategist
told Politico. “Now if we announce
we’re going, it looks like we’re just
going because of Trump. We waited
too long.”
One union adviser said that by
beating Biden to Detroit, the former
president’s team appeared to be running
a more sophisticated, agile campaign
than in 2016 or 2020. “He actually has
people who know what they’re doing,”
the adviser told Politico. “He boxed
Biden in. It was kinda genius.”
Working-class voters were once a
bedrock of the Democratic coalition
but that support has been eroded in
recent elections. White working-class
voters were key to Trump’s victory over
Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Deepening the alarm among Demo-
crats, recent polls suggest that support
for Biden among working-class black
and Hispanic voters is also falling. In-
flation and high prices are continuing
to weigh on the president’s approval
rating.
A New York Times/Siena poll last
month found that Biden’s lead over
Trump among non-white voters with-
out a degree was 16 points — 49 per
cent to 33 per cent. In 2020, Biden beat
Trump in the same bloc by 48 points.
Underscoring Trump’s grip on the
Republican primary, a new poll indicat-
ed that the former president retained
his lead in New Hampshire, the second
state to vote in the race for the nomina-
tion next year.
The former president led the field on
39 per cent, and the CNN/University of
New Hampshire poll made dismal
reading for Ron DeSantis, the Florida
governor once seen as Trump’s closest
rival, who plunged to fifth on 10 per cent,
down 13 points since July. DeSantis, who
led Trump in New Hampshire at the
start of this year, trails the biotech tycoon
Vivek Ramaswamy, the former South
Carolina governor Nikki Haley and the
former New Jersey governor Chris
Christie in the latest survey.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 2GM 31

Wingsuit daredevil decapitated by plane’s wing ‘after error by pilot’
France
Charles Bremner Paris
A pilot’s errors caused his aircraft to
decapitate a man who was flying in a
wingsuit over southwestern France, a
court has been told.
Alain C, 64, is on trial for manslaugh-
ter over the accident in which the left
wing and a strut of his single-engined
aircraft hit Nicolas Galy, 40.
About 20 seconds before the inci-
dent, Galy, an engineer and experi-
enced skydiver, had dropped out of
Alain C’s Pilatus aircraft wearing the
wingsuit, which is a whole-body gar-
ment with webbed sleeves. He was the
first of two wingsuiters who were re-
leased at about 14,400ft (4,400m) over
Bouloc-en-Quercy, north of Toulouse,
in July 2018.
Descending rapidly, Alain C’s aircraft
caught up with the two skydivers
1,000ft into their descent, after they
had pulled out of their initial free fall
and begun to glide. After the collision,
Galy’s emergency parachute opened
and his body descended into a field.
Alain C, who worked for a local para-
chute school, admitted to the court in
Montauban that he had not briefed the
eight parachutists and two wingsuiters
who were aboard his fourth jump flight
of the day. He had lost sight of the wing-
suiters and assumed he was clear of
them, he said.
“Compared with parachutists who
are in free fall, it’s more complicated
with the wingsuiters who go more in a
straight line,” he said. “They don’t de-
scend much and can be in conflict with
the aircraft.”
Galy, who had made 226 jumps, “did
not follow the expected course and
should never have been on that course”,
the pilot said. “He was parallel to the
plane and I thought he was further
north. It wasn’t my responsibility. I
think my flight path made sense. This
has been the tragedy of my life but I am
not at fault.”
Jeanne Regagnon, the prosecutor,
World
said Galy was “the only one who
obeyed the rules without negligence”.
Alain C also admitted that his licence
had not been valid for the flight because
he had been in breach of restrictions
imposed by the aviation authority as a
result of a medical condition.
Regagnon asked for a 12-month sus-
pended prison term and a €10,000 fine
for the Midi-Pyrénées parachute
school, whose president is also on trial.
The verdict will be announced in
November.

The B-24D, which

crashed off Malta
in 1943, was
If Iran goes
found by divers
from the local
university
nuclear, so
will we, says
Saudi leader
Saudi Arabia
Alistair Dawber Washington
Saudi Arabia will develop a nuclear
Airman’s remains weapon if Iran, its main regional rival,
succeeds in producing one, Crown

found 80 years on Prince Mohammed bin Salman said.

In an interview last night with Fox
News, Saudi Arabia’s de-facto leader
said he would not allow Tehran to be

E
ighty years against Reggio di the only confirmed nuclear power in
after a B-24D Calabria harbour on the Middle East.
Liberator the mainland opposite “If they get one, we have to get one,”
bomber Sicily. But when the he said, threatening what could become
crashed into aircraft suffered a new nuclear arms race.
the sea during a engine trouble, it archaeologist, locating the wreckage The agency said Israel has never confirmed that it has
Valletta
Second World War came under fire and discovered the wreck of the B-24D near Newman’s name had also developed nuclear weapons, but is
raid on Italy, the plunged into the sea in 2015 and has now MALTA Benghajsa Point.” been recorded on the widely believed to have a stockpile.
remains of a missing off Malta. While the retrieved the body. Supported by the US tablets of the missing Saudi officials have long warned that
crew member have rest of the crew were “The US makes a Three miles defence POW/MIA at Sicily-Rome a nuclear-armed Iran would jeopardise
been retrieved rescued, Newman, 22, promise to all its Benghajsa accounting agency, American Cemetery security in the region.
(Isambard Wilkinson was declared missing servicemen that no Point Mediterranean Gambin and his team in Impruneta. “A Tehran has denied seeking a nuclear
writes). in action and after the man will be left Sea excavated the wreck, rosette will be placed bomb. However, its enemies say that a
On May 6, 1943, war his body was behind,” Gambin told located at 58 metres, next to his name to civilian nuclear programme is a smoke-
Sergeant Irving designated as “non- the Times of Malta. The university said: finding suspected indicate he has been screen to cover efforts to produce a via-
Newman and nine recoverable”. “The entire time we “Years of perseverance human remains. The accounted for. ble nuclear device.
other crew members The University of were working, the and collaboration US military used Newman will be “That’s a bad move,” the prince said
took part in the US Malta’s technical whole team wanted to between organisations mitochondrial DNA buried at a place and of the possibility of a nuclear-armed
Ninth Air Force’s diving team, headed go the extra mile to led to the and dental analysis to time to be determined Iran. “If you use it, you . . . have a big
bombing mission by Timmy Gambin, an bring this boy home.” breakthrough in confirm the identity. later,” they said. fight with the rest of the world.”
His position is close to that of Israel,
which has said it will not allow Iran to
develop nuclear weapons.

Europe’s rabbis set up home in

Saudi Arabia and Israel have enjoyed
increasingly warm relations in recent
years, suggesting that formal diplo-
matic ties could be established for the
first time. “Every day we get closer,” the
prince said in the Fox News interview.

city where Nazi terror started
Germany
Lianne Kolirin Munich
Europe’s leading alliance of Orthodox
rabbis has laid down new permanent
roots, streets from where Adolf Hitler
first tried to seize power a century ago.
Munich was the location of the failed
beer hall putsch in November 1923 and
the centre of Kristallnacht, the riots 15
years later in which nearly 100 Jews
were killed and synagogues and Jew-
ish-owned property were destroyed.
The first Nazi concentration camp was
set up in Dachau, only 14 miles away.
Despite this dark history, the Confer-
ence of European Rabbis has chosen
the city as its new home, opening its
premises on Tuesday.
The organisation was set up in 1956
to revive “the vanquished Jewish com-
munities on the European mainland”
and unite more than 700 religious
leaders on the continent.
It is presided over by Pinchas Gold-
schmidt, who was chief rabbi of Mos-
cow until he resigned last year after the
invasion of Ukraine. In his address at
the official opening, Goldschmidt said:
“It was unthinkable to everyone to
come back to a place such as this and to
return to a country capable of such hor-
rific deeds.” But he added: “Munich is
the key to German-Jewish relations —
for the worse, but also for the better. It’s
here that the war against the Jewish re-
ligion started.”
Munich was also the site of another
dark episode. In 1972, 11 Israeli athletes
were murdered by Palestinian terror-
ists at the Olympics, the first time the
Games had been held in Germany
since Hitler’s showcase event in Berlin
in 1936.
Yet the city has seen a revival of its
Jewish population in recent years and is
home to Germany’s biggest Jewish
community. With about 9,000 mem-
bers, its numbers are the same as in
1933. “It’s a beacon for Jewish life in
Europe,” Goldschmidt said, adding that
many Jewish families had resettled in
Munich from Ukraine and Russia —
and were still coming.
Speaking alongside Goldschmidt
was Charlotte Knobloch, 90, head of
the Jewish Community of Munich and
Upper Bavaria, who survived the
Second World War by going into hiding
and whose grandmother perished at
Theresienstadt, a walled ghetto in what
is now the Czech Republic.
Knobloch said she was “thrilled” by
Pinchas
Goldschmidt says
antisemitism is
a rising threat
the move by the rabbis’ conference.
“There were times in my life when no
Jewish person would have come to stay
in Munich. But now my home city is
again an important place for European
Judaism.”
Reflecting on the rise of antisemitic
attacks in Germany and the growth in
support for right-wing parties, Kno-
bloch said: “It’s important for this city to
send out a shining light again.”
Goldschmidt highlighted key prob-
lems. He said: “Antisemitism is every-
where today and this is why we are here
— to keep up the faith. We have the
struggle with the practices of religious
freedoms, of attempted legislation
against Jewish practices, especially cir-
cumcision and kosher slaughter, in
many countries. And Europe is at war.
Two Jewish communities are suffering
terribly, in Ukraine and in Russia.”
The rabbis’ conference has been run
mostly from Britain since its inception.
The move was in part prompted by
Brexit and a desire to be closer to Brus-
sels. After its conference was held in
Munich for the first time last year,
Markus Söder, the minister-president
of Bavaria, invited the body to settle
there with €1.5 million of annual fund-
ing. Florian Herrmann, head of the
state chancellery and Bavaria’s minister
for federal affairs and the media, said:
“We promise to protect Jewish life in
Bavaria with all our power and means.”
He was also asked about the 2018
murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal
Khashoggi by the country’s agents in its
consulate in Turkey. He said he was re-
forming the security system to make
sure this kind of “mistake” did not
happen again.
President Biden’s administration is
pressing ahead with an effort to broker
historic ties between the two regional
powers. Normalisation talks are the
centrepiece of negotiations that include
discussions of US security guarantees
and civilian nuclear help that Riyadh
has sought, as well as possible Israeli
concessions to the Palestinians.
“For us, the Palestinian issue is very
important,” the prince said. “We need
to solve that part.”
Publicly, US officials insist any
breakthrough is far away, but privately
they tout the benefits of a regional deal,
including creating a bulwark against
Iran and countering China’s inroads in
the Gulf.
Biden met Binyamin Netanyahu, the
Israeli prime minister, in New York
yesterday during the UN general
assembly. They pledged to work to-
gether towards Israeli-Saudi normalisa-
tion. Netanyahu said a “historic” peace
deal with Saudi Arabia was possible.
32
World
US scouring
the Pacific for
sand airstrips
Michael Evans
The United States is searching for
3,000ft-long “straight” sandy beach-
es in the Pacific to use as airstrips in
any future conflict with China, a mili-
tary commander has said.
Lieutenant General Tony Bauern-
feind, head of US air force special op-
erations command, told a conference
that with few airbases available in the
Indo-China region, American mili-
tary leaders believe beach airstrips
would provide perfect landing spots
for special forces using MC-130J Her-
cules and CV-22 Osprey aircraft.
Such landings were carried out in
the Second World War and in recent
exercises by the Royal Air Force.
The plan will maximise the options
for US flight missions, which China
would find difficult to counter.
Speaking at the Air and Space
Forces Association annual confer-
ence in Maryland, Bauernfeind said:
“We’re getting the engineers looking
at it because there’s a lot of 3,000ft
straight beaches [in the Pacific] to de-
liver the effects we need.”
Back pack A police dog unit taking part in the Day of the Glories of the Army parade at O’Higgins park in Santiago, Chile, during Independence Day celebrations
TV drama casts Chinese
as the good guys of Africa
Tanzania
Jane Flanagan Cape Town
A glossy medical drama set in an
African country is the newest pro-
duction in a flourishing “Chinese sav-
iour” genre designed to counter Bei-
jing’s reputation as a predator on the
continent.
Welcome to Milele Village stars
some of China’s biggest TV names as
doctors and nurses who help grateful
locals in the African bush in a produc-
tuion that is as hackneyed as any-
thing ever made by Hollywood.
Milele means “forever” in Swahili
and the show, shot in Tanzania, rep-
resents the “everlasting friendship
between China and Africa”, accord-
ing to publicity material.
Spliced between the struggles of
the foreign humanitarians who “use
their superb medical skills to alleviate
the suffering of African people” are
shots of Mount Kilimanjaro, dancing
villagers and the savannahs of the
Serengeti teeming with wildlife. Tan-
zania’s tourism minister will be de-
Crèche owner charged over fentanyl death
United States
Alistair Dawber Washington
The owner of a New York nursery
where a toddler died last week after
being exposed to fentanyl has
been hit with federal drug charges,
days after being accused of the
boy’s murder.
Grei Mendez, 36, who operates
Divino Niño Daycare in the Bronx,
was arrested over the weekend with
Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, her
husband’s cousin, who was renting a
bedroom in the nursery.
Both were charged in a state court
with murder of “depraved indiffer-
ence” after one-year-old Nicholas
Dominici died on Friday. He had
2GM Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
lighted with a boost to a sector that
makes a key contribution to the
country’s GDP.
The series is part of Beijing’s soft
power efforts to project itself as a
great, benevolent force after its repu-
tation took a knock during the pan-
demic. Having firm allies in Africa is
increasingly important for Beijing to
weather pressure from America and
the West. Yet Tanzania and other
partners, including Kenya and Zam-
bia, have also amassed huge debts
from China’s development loans, in
what critics have described as a form
of “debt-trap diplomacy” that gives
Beijing leverage and the option of
seizing infrastructure and resources.
This year marks a decade since
President Xi announced his Belt and
Road Initiative to revive the ancient
Silk Road network of trade routes
linking China with Central Asia, the
Middle East, Africa and Europe. The
milestone has brought fresh scrutiny
of the progress and pitfalls of his am-
bition, so the feel-good Welcome to
Milele Village is well timed.
been exposed to a 1kg brick of fentanyl
stored at the nursery. Three other
children became dangerously ill.
Investigators said they were looking
for Mendez’s husband, who fled
shortly after learning of the incident.
Officials say the block of highly
addictive opioid had been stored on
top of playmats used by children at
the nursery, which was in a small flat.
They also found devices for mixing
the powder with other narcotics and
pressing it into bricks.
Mendez cried out for her daughter
and mother when she appeared in a
Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.
She denied knowledge of the alleged
drug operation. Mendez’s lawyer said
the drugs belonged to her husband.
The “Chinese saviour” formula —
helpless Africa in need of rescuing
from itself and western baddies by a
competent Beijing — is well honed
and increasingly popular with Chi-
nese audiences. Zhang Zhisheng, Bei-
jing’s consul-general in Zanzibar, said
its release had drawn “wild attention”,
some 60 years after China first dis-
patched medical teams overseas.
Viewers in Africa will get to see the
show as funding was agreed between
the China Media Group and African
state broadcasters to dub a number of
productions in local languages.
Ebola Fighters, a 24-part drama
about Chinese doctors tackling the
deadly virus in west Africa, was re-
leased in 2021. Before that, in 2017,
Wolf Warrior 2, the second in a jingo-
istic action franchise, featured a
Chinese version of Rambo single-
handedly routing pirates off the con-
tinent’s coast. It became China’s top
box-office earner and inspired the
nickname “wolf warriors” for a new
diplomatic generation executing Xi’s
assertive foreign policy approach.
Prosecutors have accused Mendez of
being involved in a drug distribution
ring and of helping her husband to
escape.
After discovering the three children,
ranging in age from eight months to
two years old, were unconscious,
Mendez made three calls, including
two to her husband, before dialling
for an ambulance, prosecutors said.
Clay Kaminsky, a lawyer assigned
to represent Mendez, said the govern-
ment had tried to pin the “sensational
case” on his client without evidence. A
mother of four with no prior arrests,
Mendez had worked in restaurants
and as a home health aide since
moving from the Dominican Republic
nine years ago, he said.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
world markets (Change on the day)
FTSE 100
7,731.65 (+71.45)
8,500
8,000
7,500
7,000
Aug 22 30 Sep 6 13 20
Surprise fall in inflation leaves interest rate decision in balance
Jack Barnett
Economics Correspondent
The Bank of England’s decision on
whether to push ahead with another in-
terest rate rise today or hit pause was on
a knife-edge after a cooldown in infla-
tion in August surprised the City.
Expectation that the monetary
policy committee (MPC) would impose
another 25 basis-point rise, lifting the
base rate to a 15-year high of 5.5 per
Pressure on
Wilko family
over payouts
Administrators to conduct review of dividends
Isabella Fish Retail Editor
Wilko’s administrators are to question
majority shareholder Lisa Wilkinson
on the £77 million in dividends paid out
to investors in the decade before the re-
tailer’s collapse as calls grow for the
Wilkinson family to plug a £56 million
hole in workers’ pension pots.
The Times understands that PwC
will conduct a review into the dividends
paid out to the Wilkinson family and
the retailer’s other directors as part of a
wider investigation into company
transactions in the years building up to
the administration.
It comes as MPs demand an inquiry
into the dividends paid out to Wilkin-
son and her family as the company’s
pension fund is taken into the Pension
Protection Fund (PPF) and pensioners
face a big cut to retirement payments.
The administrators are understood
to have already started to collect infor-
mation from directors, including
Wilkinson. They will then conduct in-
terviews and look through bank state-
ments to investigate the causes of insol-
vency and decide whether any claims
should be brought against them.
Wilkinson is the granddaughter of
James Kempsey Wilkinson, the com-
pany’s founder. She took over as the
boss of the retail chain in 2014 when she
bought her majority stake in Wilko
from her cousin, Karin Swann, also a
granddaughter of the founder.
The family have been criticised for
paying huge dividends to themselves
and former shareholders — including a
£3 million payment last year, despite re-
porting losses of £39 million.
Wilkinson previously defended the
commodities
Dow Jones Gold
34,440.88 (-76.85) $1,945.45 (+13.45)
37,500
35,000
32,500
30,000
Aug 22 29 Sep 6 14 20 Aug 23 30
cent, fell from a near-certainty to odds
of 50-50 within minutes of yesterday’s
unexpected data from the Office for
National Statistics (ONS).
Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and
Nomura all changed their calls to pre-
dict a hold at 5.25 per cent. The yield on
two-year UK government bonds fell to
a three-month low of 4.83 per cent and
sterling weakened against the dollar,
before stabilising at $1.24.
The shift in sentiment came after
payouts during the loss-making period
and pointed to the retailer’s £100 mil-
lion worth of assets and a bank balance
of £58 million at the time.
She told The Times that the board
had “checked . .. there was sufficient
cash, we went through the right gov-
ernance, the auditors checked it off”,
adding that what the family had taken
out “really wouldn’t have made a differ-
ence”.
Sir Mike Amesbury, Labour MP for
Weaver Vale, said the situation “high-
lights the very worst case of capitalism
with bells on. If that cash hadn’t been
taken out, Wilko may well have rode
through the storm. And if you look at
the deficit of the pension fund, there is
a clear correlation over that period of
similar levels of the dividends.”
The scheme, with some 2,000 mem-
bers, has a deficit of £76 million, but is
set to recover £20 million from security
it took over a distribution centre and
other freehold properties.
As the scheme enters an assessment
process for the PPF, trustees will con-
tinue to pay pensioners, but those com-
ing up to retirement may receive only
90 per cent of their promised pension.
Amesbury said: “Those who are now
retired will get protection through the
PPF, but [for] those not at that age it will
have a detrimental effect.”
The Pensions Regulator said: “We
have been engaging for some time with
Wilko and pension scheme trustees to
make sure benefits are protected.”
The PPF said: “Scheme members can
be reassured their benefits are protect-
ed to at least PPF levels.”
PwC declined to comment.
Brent crude (6pm)
$ $94.36 (-0.46)
2,200
2,000
1,800
1,600
Sep 6 13 20 Aug 23 30 Sep 6
ONS data suggested that annual infla-
tion slipped to 6.7 per cent in August,
down from July’s 6.8 per cent. Analysts
and the Bank of England’s forecasters
had forecast a rise to about 7 per cent.
Measures of underlying inflation also
fell sharply. Core inflation, which strips
out volatile food and energy prices and
is monitored closely by the MPC,
dropped to 6.2 per cent from 6.9 per
cent, way below Bank projections.
Today’s interest rate decision had
Street fighting man The boss of Steve
Madden, the US shoe brand that has
collaborated with Winnie Harlow, the
model, dismissed claims that London’s
Oxford Street has lost its lustre amid
Business
currencies
£/$
$ $1.2388 (-0.0003)
120
100
80
60
13 20 Aug 23 30 Sep 6 13
been billed as the toughest to call since
December 2021, when the Bank em-
barked on the most aggressive run of
rate rises in more than three decades.
Data since the MPC’s last meeting in
August has been mixed. Growth has re-
versed while unemployment has accel-
erated faster than predicted, suggesting
that aggressive tightening is feeding
through into the real economy.
On the flip side, private sector wages,
which indicate that inflation is becom-
the rise of ecommerce. Ed Rosenfeld,
chief executive of the firm, which has
opened its first store in Oxford Street,
said it was “still one of the most iconic
shopping destinations in the world”.
33
£/€
$ €1.1560 (-0.0036) ¤
1.400 1.300
1.300 1.200
1.200 1.100
1.100 1.000
20 Aug 23 30 Sep 6 13 20
ing embedded into the economy, rose
by more than 8 per cent in the three
months to July. Consumer price infla-
tion is still running well in excess of
three times the Bank’s 2 per cent target.
Goldman’s team said: “Combined
with their recent dovish commentary,
we now expect the MPC to keep the
Bank rate unchanged.”
Nomura economist George Buckley
said a hold was “a very real risk indeed”.
Chesterman’s
Cazoo stake
is ‘wiped out’
Helen Cahill
Cazoo’s founder has seen his 24.3 per
cent stake in the car retailer almost
wiped out after the company signed a
$630 million debt-for-equity swap that
will leave Viking Global Investors, a US
fund, as its biggest shareholder.
The company pushed through the
swap, first reported by Sky News, with
bondholders after its share price
dropped below the $1 threshold re-
quired for it to retain its place on the
New York Stock Exchange.
The share price has slid since Cazoo
listed for $7 billion in August 2021. Alex
Chesterman, the entrepreneur behind
Zoopla and Lovefilm who launched Ca-
zoo in 2018 and remains chairman, sold
shares worth £100 million before the
market debut.
Cazoo, which buys second-hand cars
and vans and inspects them before de-
livering the vehicles directly to custom-
ers’ homes, increased its annual sales
from 49,461 to 85,035 last year. But it
came under pressure from markets to
turn a profit after making losses before
tax of £531.5 million in 2021 and
£525.5 million last year.
The company laid off hundreds of
staff and pulled out of Germany, Spain,
France and Italy in a bid to stem losses.
It has set a target of becoming profita-
ble by the end of this year by focusing
on the UK. Its shares were priced at
99 cents last week and it faced being de-
listed from the NYSE if they traded at
less than $1 over a period of 30 days.
The restructuring deal has put in
place new borrowing facilities worth
$200 million to support the company’s
turnaround efforts. Cazoo’s current eq-
uity holders will control 8 per cent of
the firm after the deal and will receive
warrants unlocking access to new
shares if the market valuation reaches
$525 million.
Chesterman said: “Today’s agree-
ment represents an opportunity to sig-
nificantly deleverage Cazoo’s capital
structure and enhance the financial
flexibility it needs in order to achieve
profitable growth.”
34
Business
Need to know
1
Wilko’s administrators PwC are
to question majority
shareholder Lisa Wilkinson on
the £77 million in dividends paid
out to investors in the decade
before the retailer’s collapse. Calls
are growing for the Wilkinson
family to plug a £56 million hole in
workers’ pension pots.
2
Expectation that the Bank of
England’s monetary policy
committee would impose
another 25 basis-point rise, lifting
the base rate to 5.5 per cent, fell
from a near-certainty to odds of
50-50 after data from the Office
for National Statistics showed a
fall in inflation.
3
Cazoo’s founder has seen his
24.3 per cent stake in the car
retailer almost wiped out after
it signed a $630 million debt-for-
equity swap that will leave Viking
Global Investors, a US fund, as its
biggest shareholder.
4
Andy Bird, chief executive of
Pearson, the world’s biggest
textbook publisher, has made
the surprise decision to leave after
three years, for which he will have
received close to $30 million. He
will be replaced by Omar Abbosh,
a senior Microsoft executive.
5
Inflation is set to fall below
5 per cent by December,
economists predict, putting
Rishi Sunak on course to achieve
his pledge of halving the rate. The
forecasts came after a surprise fall
in consumer price index inflation
to 6.7 per cent in August from 6.8
per cent in July.
6
NatWest is considering
rejoining the CBI and
supporting a rescue package
with a group of other large banks
to save the troubled business lobby
group. The high street lender
could resume its membership after
signs that the government is
prepared to re-engage with the
organisation.
7
Philip Morris, the maker of
Marlboro cigarettes, is
considering selling a stake in
the respiratory drugs company it
contentiously bought two years
ago as its shift away from tobacco
falters. It is considering options for
Vectura and has held discussions
with Deutsche Bank, according to
The Wall Street Journal.
8
The boss of Oxford
Biomedica is to reposition it
as a “pure-play” contract
drugs manufacturer as he unveiled
a new strategy. Frank Mathias
made a large cut to forecasts this
year and outlined a renewed cost-
cutting drive that includes about
170 job losses in Oxford.
9
M&G and its life insurance
subsidiary, Prudential
Assurance, are pushing back
into the pension scheme buyouts
sector seven years after pulling
out. The fund management group
revealed that it had just done two
so-called bulk annuity deals in the
past few months.
10 The City regulator has
warned the insurance
industry of its concerns
that companies are short-changing
customers by selling poor value
products. The Financial Conduct
Authority has written to every
firm telling them to improve their
treatment of consumers.
Industry split
by decision to
water down
green targets
Rishi Sunak’s relaxation
of UK climate change
commitments has been
met with both criticism
and support by business
Big businesses criticised Rishi Sunak’s
decision yesterday to water down a
number of green targets, although
some in the gas lobby, as well as land-
lords, welcomed certain changes.
The prime minister’s most eye-catch-
ing reversal was to delay the 2030 ban
on new petrol and diesel car sales until
2035. He also announced that he would
weaken measures forcing households
to replace gas and oil boilers with
expensive heat pumps and making
property owners undertake energy-
efficiency upgrades. The automotive,
energy and finance industries were
among those to criticise the plans.
carmakers
Ford, the bestselling car brand in
Britain, led the corporate backlash
against the delay to the 2030 petrol and
diesel sales ban. It has made a commit-
ment to selling only electric cars in
Europe from 2025, and in Britain its re-
search establishment in Essex is driving
the transition of its bestselling Transit
van to zero emissions.
“Three years ago the government an-
nounced the UK’s transition to electric
new car and van sales from 2030. The
auto industry is investing to meet that
challenge, [including] £430 million in-
vested in Ford’s UK development and
manufacturing facilities, with further
funding planned for the 2030 time
frame,” Lisa Brankin, the Ford UK
chairwoman, said.
“Our business needs three things
Pearson chief behind revival heads for exit —
Tom Howard
The chief executive of Pearson, the
world’s biggest textbook publisher, has
made the surprise decision to leave
after three years, for which he will have
received close to $30 million.
Andy Bird, who has led the FTSE 100
company since October 2020, con-
firmed yesterday that he was retiring.
He will be replaced by Omar Abbosh, a
senior Microsoft executive whom he
called a “superstar”.
Including shares given to him as part
of a “golden hello”, which are now
worth $13 million, Bird will have been
paid around $28 million for his stint at
Pearson if he hits all his targets this
year.
Bird, who turns 60 in January, has
been trying to adapt the company for a
digital world in which more students
get their information online — an area
where it has lagged in the past. To this
end he oversaw the launch of the Pear-
son+ app, which gives its users unlimit-
from the government: ambition, com-
mitment and consistency. A relaxation
of 2030 would undermine all three.”
The Society of Motor Manufacturers
and Traders speaks for the UK automo-
tive industry as a whole, led by the
Jaguar and Range Rover group JLR,
and BMW, the parent company of Mini
— both of which have received govern-
ment support totalling £1 billion to
respectively build a battery cell produc-
tion gigafactory and to invest in new
electric Minis.
Mike Hawes, chief executive of the
trade body, said that if the UK were to
be a leader in zero-emission motoring
in both manufacturing and as a market,
it would require consumers who “want
to make the switch”. He said that this
required the government to provide “a
clear, consistent message, attractive
incentives, and charging infrastructure
that gives confidence rather than
anxiety”, adding: “Confusion and un-
certainty will only hold them back.”
Volkswagen Group, whose brands,
which range from Audi to Skoda,
account for one in five of new registra-
tions every year in Britain, and is a
leader in electric cars with its sub-brand
ID, said: “We urgently need a clear
and reliable regulatory framework that
creates market certainty and consumer
confidence.”
wider motor industry
Other motoring industry companies
and organisations were also critical. Ian
Plummer, of Auto Trader, the FTSE 100
online second-car sales marketplace,
said: “Pushing back the 2030 ban on
new petrol and diesel sales by five years
is a hugely retrograde step that puts
politics ahead of net-zero goals. The
prime minister has taken the easy op-
tion with one eye on polling day.”
Stephen Phipson, chief executive of
Make UK, the manufacturing trade
ed access to a huge library of textbooks
and learning tools.
The app, launched just over a year
ago, has 938,000 subscribers paying
$9.99 a month. The appointment of Ab-
bosh, who has run Microsoft’s industry
solutions business for the past three
years, is widely regarded as Pearson’s
latest push to reposition itself as a
digital business rather than a tradi-
tional textbook publisher.
Bird, who turns 60 in January, said
that he had approached Omid Korde-
stani, Pearson’s chairman, earlier this
year about stepping down, but his
departure caught the markets by
surprise.
“This news will surprise many inves-
tors and commentators,” Roddy David-
son, a media analyst at Shore Capital,
said, adding that “short-term share
price volatility” was now likely.
Pearson’s shares fell more than 5 per
cent at the opening bell but recovered
most of their losses as the day wore on,
closing down 9p, or 1 per cent, at 875p.
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Carmakers were among the most vociferous critics of the green rethink, having sunk
body, said the announcement would
“hit SME businesses in the automotive
supply chain particularly hard” and was
“a huge setback for manufacturers, who
require stability and confidence in
order to invest”.
Simon Williams at the RAC, one of
Britain’s leading motoring groups, said
the announcement “risks slowing
down both the momentum the motor
industry has built up in switching to
electric powertrains and ultimately the
uptake of electric vehicles”.
electric vehicle charging
companies
Some of the biggest names in oil and
gas including Shell and BP have set out
ambitious plans to invest in a huge ex-
pansion of electric vehicle charging in-
frastructure in Britain and have been
vocal supporters of the 2030 phase-out
of new petrol and diesel car sales.
ChargeUK, the industry body that
On Bird’s first day the shares were trad-
ing at 535p, so are now about 60 per
cent higher. The group was one of the
best performers on the FTSE 100 last
year. “I think [my tenure] has been
successful,” Bird told The Times.
“You can look at the share price and
Andy Bird led
Pearson through a
digital revolution
other metrics. Pearson today is a vastly
improved company from where it was
three years ago and that gives me an
immense sense of pride.”
Kordestani thanked Bird for his “out-
standing leadership”. There is some sur-
prise that Bird is walking less than three
years into his turnaround of the busi-
ness, but he said that he achieved what
represents the oil companies and other
charger operators such as Elon Musk’s
electric carmaker, Tesla, said its mem-
bers planned to spend £6 billion install-
ing chargers this decade and that the
2030 deadline had been an “essential
catalyst” for these plans. “Policy uncer-
tainty puts that investment and the jobs
that go with it in danger,” it warned.
energy suppliers
Many of Britain’s biggest energy suppli-
ers are already offering heat pumps and
energy-efficiency upgrades to their
household customers. E.ON, the UK’s
third biggest supplier, said that water-
ing down Britain’s green goals risked
“condemning people to many more
years of living in cold and draughty
homes that are expensive to heat, in
cities clogged with dirty air from fossil
fuels”.
Chris Norbury, chief executive of
E.ON UK, said: “There is no ‘green v
Behind the story
A
glance at Pearson’s
share price would
suggest that Andy Bird
must have been a
popular figure with the
publisher’s shareholders over the
past few years (Tom Howard
writes). Under Bird’s watch, the
stock, which had been in almost
perpetual decline before his arrival,
rose by close to 60 per cent.
The improvement has meant a
company that had been flirting
with relegation from the FTSE 100
is now a mainstay of London’s top
index, boasting a market value in
excess of £6 billion. On top of that,
Pearson’s profits have risen 46 per
cent since 2020, and once the latest
share buyback is completed, the
best part of £1 billion will have been
returned to shareholders.
 the times | Thursday September 21 2023
hundreds of millions towards meeting the previous 2030 fossil fuel phase-out target
cheap’ debate, it’s a false argument that
only serves to delay the vital work of
transforming our economy — work
that creates more affordable and secure
energy while also boosting jobs and
skills, often in the areas of the country
most at risk of being left behind.”
Raman Bhatia, chief executive of
Ovo, another big supplier, said: “This is
not the time to roll back on pledges.
While we welcome the increased boiler
upgrade scheme grant, the overall lack
of ambition to decarbonise homes and
the confusing signals being sent to both
the public and business on our coun-
try’s green agenda are disappointing.”
Jenny Curtis, managing director of
Vattenfall Heat, which provides low-
carbon heat networks, warned: “The
UK cannot afford to stall the deploy-
ment of low-carbon heating by sending
mixed messages about the future of
fossil fuels. Companies will stop invest-
ing and the establishment of the supply
with $28m for three years’ work
But Bird is not as loved by
investors as one might assume. In
April almost half of them voted
against plans that would allow him
to earn as much as $11.7 million this
year, up from $8.5 million in 2022.
He has faced other criticism
during his tenure, too — and even
before he formally started.
Shareholders were unhappy he was
given 1.2 million shares as part of a
“golden hello” when he took the
job. Worth $13 million, he needs to
hold on to about $5.8 million worth
of them for two years after his
departure, but the rest he will be
free to sell at the start of 2024.
When Pearson was first looking
for its new chief executive, The
Times revealed that Bird, in his
capacity as a non-executive
director, sat in on the interviews of
several candidates before deciding
to throw his hat into the ring. “This
chain and skills base that we so desper-
ately need will fail to happen.”
gas boiler and pipe industry
Not everyone in the energy industry
has fully backed the government’s
agenda on heat pumps; some gas net-
work owners and boiler manufacturers
have been lobbying in favour of con-
verting the gas grid to carry clean-
burning hydrogen as an alternative
heating solution.
Mike Foster, of the Energy and Utili-
ties Alliance, which represents a num-
ber of boiler manufacturers, welcomed
the reprieve for properties off the gas
grid. “It’s a very sensible move to extend
the off-grid boiler ban to 2035 — that’s
smart politics ahead of an election,” he
said.
But Foster suggested that the gov-
ernment should further water down its
heat pump goals. “The 600,000 heat
pumps a year by 2028 still stands as an
doesn’t sit easily with allowing him
to interview candidates and see the
list of candidates,” one leading
shareholder said at the time.
That he put himself forward to
lead Pearson’s turnaround but is
now departing less than three years
in will likely add to the frustration
of investors. “Obviously they are
disappointed and concerned,” a top
shareholder said.
It has been a lucrative period for
Bird, who had thought his prime
earning days were behind him after
his retirement. For the three years,
including pay of up to $11.7 million
for 2023, he will have received
almost $30 million from Pearson.
Omid Kordestani, chairman, said
the company was “going to miss”
Bird, but added: “If Andy feels like
it’s the right time to retire, I’d
rather have someone with a fresh
energy and perspective.”
arbitrary target that has not been
changed but has become even more dif-
ficult to achieve,” he said.
Sarah Williams, director of regula-
tion at Wales & West Utilities, which
operates gas pipes supplying 7.5 million
customers, said it supported pursuing
net zero “in a way that doesn’t leave
people out of pocket”. She added:
“There’s no single solution — but a dual
approach with renewable electricity
and low-carbon hydrogen will give us
the best chance of meeting the scale
and pace of the challenge in a way that
works for households, industry and
other businesses alike.”
property sector
Landlords appear to be among the
main beneficiaries of the changes an-
nounced yesterday, with a reprieve on
obligations to upgrade the energy effi-
ciency of their homes. An increase in
the number of landlords selling up has
been attributed in part to the threat of
regulations that could have forced
them to make costly changes. Ben Bea-
dle, of the National Residential Land-
lords Association, said: “It is welcome
that landlords will not be required to in-
vest substantial sums of money during
a cost of living crisis when many are
themselves struggling financially.”
financial services
Britain’s vast financial services industry
supplies much of the capital needed to
support the country’s energy transi-
tion. Stephen Haddrill, the director-
general of the Finance & Leasing Asso-
ciation, the trade body for the consum-
er credit, motor and asset finance
industries, said: “To those businesses
that relied in good faith on the original
2030 deadline, it represents millions of
pounds of misdirected or mistimed
investment. As for the wholesale
funders who provided that finance for
firms, regaining their trust will be an
uphill battle.”
A spokesman for UK Finance, which
represents the banks and other finan-
cial services companies, said it was “im-
portant that we have ambitious and
clear policies from the government”.
He added: “The banking and finance
industry has long called for clarity in
the UK’s net-zero policy, which is nec-
essary to give certainty for businesses
and households across the country.”
Galina Dimitrova, at the Investment
Association, which speaks for fund
managers who oversee £10 trillion of
assets, said: “The UK’s 2050 net-zero
target is a legally binding commitment,
and to achieve this goal both private
and public capital need to be invested
with confidence.”
Reporting by Emily Gosden,
Robert Lea, Ben Martin,
Tom Howard and Max Kendix
he set out to. “I had three objectives
[when I joined]: steer the company
through the pandemic; lay out a clear
strategy and realign the company; and
get it moving financially and in rude
health. I had no time frame about how
long I would stay but I wasn’t going to
leave until I felt that had been
achieved.”
When Bird left Disney in 2018, he
said that Pearson was his “final fron-
tier” as he wanted to spend more time
with his wife.
Bird will leave once Abbosh has set-
tled in, likely to be early next year.
Abbosh will be paid a salary of £1 mil-
lion and will be able to earn an annual
bonus of up to £3 million. Pearson will
also pay him £250,000 in lieu of a bonus
that he will miss out on by leaving Mic-
rosoft, as well as awarding him shares
worth £13 million to match what he
would have gained at Microsoft.
Details of Bird’s payoff will be dis-
closed “at the appropriate time”, Pear-
son said.
Wilko owes a debt
to its pensioners
business commentary Alistair Osborne
M
oral standards don’t
only apply to Sir
Philip “Effing” Green.
Other people have
taken money out of a
business, failed to plug its pension
deficit and then watched it keel
over. Take the Wilkinson family
behind the bust Wilko. Shouldn’t
they be coughing up too?
In the ten years up to the retailer’s
collapse, the Wilkinson clan took
£77 million of dividends and other
payments out of the business. That
includes £63 million in 2014, when
its boss, Lisa Wilkinson, the
granddaughter of founder James
Kempsey Wilkinson, took charge
after buying a majority stake from
her cousin Karin Swann, another
granddaughter. It also includes last
year’s £3 million dividend, when the
retailer racked up a £39 million loss,
and £3.2 million in 2018, when the
losses came in at £65 million.
In short, the owners have done
rather nicely out of the clapped-out
purveyor of home, garden and
decorating kit — not least compared
to the 2,000 Wilko pensioners
they’ve now left in the lurch. Lisa
Wilkinson signed off millions of
pounds in dividend payments. But
whatever her plans for the pension
fund, it’s now got a £56 million hole
in it — on a buyout basis and after
adjusting for a £20 million charge
over properties. The upshot? Unless
administrator PwC miraculously
finds a buyer willing to fund it, the
workers are heading for the Pension
Protection Fund and a big cut to
many of their retirement payments.
Is that fair? Hardly. And not least
after the BHS farrago that saw the
vilification of Green. Yes, the sums
are smaller. The Wilkinsons aren’t
billionaires. Nor are they swanning
about in Monaco on a yacht.
But there’s a similar principle at
stake. When BHS imploded in 2016,
the errant knight didn’t even own
the business. He’d conveniently
offloaded it a year earlier to the
prize goon Dominic Chappell, a
triple bankrupt former racing driver.
Still, no one was fooled by that —
not the media, MPs or the Pensions
Regulator. It looked as if Green had
sold BHS for a token £1 to get out of
funding a pension deficit that had
ballooned, on a buyout basis, to
£571 million by the time the retailer
collapsed. Uproar followed, with
particular focus on the £420 million
of dividends the Green family had
taken out between 2002 and 2004,
years before BHS failed.
Eventually, after a right hoo-ha
and threats to take away his
knighthood, Green injected
£363 million of his own money into
the pension fund. Sadly for him, he
never got the credit he deserved.
The reputational damage was done
and it looked as if the payment had
simply been dragged out of him.
Still, he did his bit. What of the
Wilkinsons? Of course, they don’t
have his money. But why should
they get off scot-free? The GMB
union is rightly calling on MPs to
quiz Lisa Wilkinson on her plans to
“plug” Wilko’s deficit. PwC is also
reviewing past dividends in line with
its duties as administrator to see if
there are grounds for any claims.
As for the family, a spokesman
referred all questions to PwC. Lisa
35
Business
Wilkinson has previously defended
the payouts during lossmaking
years, saying they were backed by
£100 million of assets and a then
£58 million bank balance, with the
company’s auditors having “checked
it off”. That is no consolation to her
pensioners. She needs to put some
money back in.
Pearson’s high-flier
T
hat’s all, folks! What sort of
Looney Tunes caper is this?
Andy Bird was brought in
from Disney to run Pearson, not fly
off after three years. Who expects
that from a Magic Kingdom flapper?
Donald Duck, Mayor Turkey
Lurkey and Webby Vanderquack are
all built on staying power.
Whatever, Bird is flying the
Pearson coop, retiring (again) at the
tender age of 59. The fellow who set
up the forerunner to the Disney+
streaming service had already left
the US group and started mainly
chillaxing when his non-exec
Pearson job morphed into the top
one. And, despite various run-ins
with the educational outfit’s dimmer
shareholders over his pay —
$8.5 million last year — he’s proved
good value for money: shares up
from 535p when he took charge in
October 2020 to 875p, down 1 per
cent on his surprise departure.
Bird inherited a profits warning
machine, fresh from a magnificent
seven on the watch of his
predecessor, John Fallon, mainly
due to its US textbook wing. But
Bird says he saw a “great
opportunity” in an outfit crucial to
what he calls “a lifetime of learning”.
He gave himself three objectives but
“no time frame”: steer it through
Covid; “reset the strategic direction”,
not least adding digital clout, such
as the Pearson+ learning app; and
help find his successor. All three
have been ticked off quicker than he
expected, even if the shares lag a
rebuffed 884.2p tilt from Apollo.
Instead of profits alerts, Pearson is
also now delivering on its numbers,
with adjusted operating profits up
an underlying 11 per cent last year to
£456 million. Early next year Bird
will hand over a business in far
better shape to the Microsoft exec
Omar Abbosh, who’s expected to
bring more online prowess. A short
stint then, but lots to squawk about.
Fagmaker burnt
A
ciggie group buying a medical
inhaler company always
looked a delightfully circular
business model — right up there
with a gunmaker acquiring a blood
transfusion service. It was cynical,
too. Hence 2021’s outrage, not least
from scientists, over Philip Morris
swallowing Vectura for £1 billion.
Jacek Olczak, chief Marlboro man,
dismissed critics as “stupid”. But
having written down Philip Morris’s
“medical” wing, starring Vectura, by
$680 million, he’s now said to be
looking to sell a stake in the unit
(report, page 38). Proof, maybe, he
finds it more lucrative to be killing
people than treating them.
alistair.osborne@thetimes.co.uk
36 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

Business

Inflation ‘on course for 5% this year’

Jack Barnett How price growth is shifting
Economics Correspondent
Year to July Year to August Change*
Inflation is set to fall below 5 per 41.5%
cent by December, economists Olive oil -3.2pp
38.3%
predict, putting Rishi Sunak on
course to achieve his pledge of Air travel 29.8% -17.8pp
12%
halving the rate of price rises this
year. Eggs 26.7% -4.8pp
The forecasts came after a sur- 21.9%
prise fall in consumer price index Pasta 23.1% +1.4pp
inflation to 6.7 per cent in August 24.5%
from 6.8 per cent in July, which bol- Fresh fish 17.2% -5.8pp
stered the view of analysts that the 11.4%
rapid acceleration in living costs 11.8%
Bread -2.5pp
over the past 18 months is easing. 9.3%
The City and Bank of England 11.8%
had thought the rate of price Beer +1.7pp
13.5%
growth would have risen to about 10.9%
7 per cent last month, led by higher Milk -6.5pp
4.4%
fuel costs as a result of an increase
Restaurants 9%
in global commodity prices. 8.8% -0.2pp
But an unseasonal easing in
hotel prices, which tend to rise Wine 5%
7% +2pp
steeply during the summer holi-
days, helped push inflation lower. Used cars 2.3%
-0.5% -2.8pp
Prices for clothing, furniture and
air fares all either rose much slow- Petrol -24.5%
-15.2% +9.3pp
er than their August average or
posted a sharp fall in the month. Diesel -26.6%
Recreation and culture services -19% +7.6pp
prices dropped 1 per cent over the Air fares dropped by 2.1 per cent between July and August, only the second time they have fallen during this period since 2001 Source: ONS *Percentage points

month — the category’s biggest
contraction for August on record.
Second-hand car prices, which
rose rapidly as economies emerged
from pandemic lockdowns in 2021,
fell 1.8 per cent over the past
month, compared with a 0.9 per
cent rise in the same period last
year. Food inflation, a core driver
of rising living costs this year, eased
to 13.6 per cent.
Softening price pressures pulled
core and services inflation much
lower, to 6.2 per cent and 6.8 per
cent respectively, over the year to
August. The Bank of England’s
monetary policy committee moni-
tors these readings to inform its in-
terest rate decisions.
After the figures were released,
financial markets priced in an even
chance of the Bank leaving interest
rates on hold at 5.25 per cent today.
Previously, an 80 per cent chance
had been assigned to a 0.25 per-
centage point increase. Rates have
risen at every Bank committee
meeting since December 2021.
Goldman Sachs and Nomura
both said they expected the Bank
to leave borrowing costs stable,
having previously projected a rise.
“The headline rate of CPI infla-
tion likely will edge up in Septem-
ber but will then resume its decent
in October and finish the year
slightly below 5 per cent,” analysts
at the Pantheon Macroeconomics
consultancy said. Nomura, the
Japanese investment bank, went a
step further, forecasting a fall in in-
flation to 4.4 per cent by Decem-
ber, a downgrade from its previous
projection of 4.8 per cent.
The prime minister pledged in
January to cut the rate of inflation
in half by the end of the year from
over 10 per cent to about 5 per cent.
Sanjay Raja, chief UK economist
at Deutsche Bank, said: “We think
the government is on course to ful-
fil its pledge to halve CPI by the
end of the year.”
Separate data added to the evi-
dence that the rate of consumer
price growth is poised to continue
to ease over the coming months.
The cost of raw materials used by
factories fell 2.3 per cent annually
last month, a moderation from Ju-
ly’s 3.2 per cent decline, the Office
for National Statistics said.
Further declines in headline in-
flation this year are likely to
support a recovery in household fi-
nances, which have been hit hard
over the past 18 months by big in-
creases in household costs.

Fed holds rates but dampens hopes for cuts

Mehreen Khan Economics Editor
The US Federal Reserve last night
kept its benchmark interest rate on
hold but signalled support for
another rate rise later this year and
fewer cuts than previously indicat-
ed during the next.
Ratesetters at the US central
bank kept the Fed funds rate steady
at between 5.25 per cent and 5.5 per
cent this month — a 22-year high
and in line with market forecasts.
The Fed’s policymakers said that
they expected only one more rate
increase this year, and for borrow-
ing costs to remain at high levels
throughout next year.
The Fed’s “dot plot” of predic-
tions signalled that interest rates
would fall to an average of 5 per
cent in 2024, implying only about
two rate cuts next year, fewer than
the four that ratesetters had fore-
cast at their last meeting in July.
The Fed skipped a rate rise in
June before carrying out further
monetary tightening in August.
Markets and economists now
widely expect the world’s
most powerful central bank
to keep rates “higher for
longer” amid signs that in-
flation is steadily falling to
the central bank’s 2 per
cent target.
US consumer
price inflation
has declined
from a peak
of 9.1 per cent
last summer
to 3.7 per cent in August, an in-
crease on the previous month after
a recent rise in global energy
prices.
Jerome Powell, chairman of the
Fed, said that it had not decided
whether more rate increases were
needed. He added that the cen-
tral bank was in a position to
“proceed carefully in deter-
mining the extent of addi-
tional policy firming that
may be appropriate. We will
continue to make our deci-
sions meeting by meeting.”
He added: “We intend to
hold policy at a restrictive
Jerome Powell said
that the Fed would
“proceed carefully”
level until we are confident that in-
flation is moving down sustainably
to our target.”
The US economy has shown
surprising resilience in the face of
aggressive monetary action, with
tentative signs that the jobs market
is cooling and growth will dip next
year. Despite signs of a slowdown,
economists are optimistic the Fed
will be able to achieve a “soft land-
ing”, where inflation falls steadily
towards its target without generat-
ing mass unemployment.
Wall Street turned negative after
the Fed’s comments. The Dow
Jones industrial average closed
down 76.85 points, or 0.2 per cent,
at 34,440.88, while the more
broadly based S&P 500 shed 41.75
points, or 0.9 per cent, to 4,402.20.

Mortgage rates push property price rises to 11-year low

Tom Howard
Annual house price inflation is at
its weakest level in more than a
decade following the summer
jump in mortgage rates.
Data from the Office for
National Statistics (ONS) shows
that house prices in July were typi-
cally 0.6 per cent higher than a year
earlier. That was down from a year-
on-year increase of 1.9 per cent in
June.
The last time the ONS recorded
a weaker reading was in September
2012. It takes the average UK
house price to £290,000 in July —
£2,000 more than 12 months
earlier but £2,000 below the record
set last November.
Because the ONS uses complet-
ed transactions rather than mort-
gage approvals, its data is seen as
the gold standard, but it lags be-
hind more timely readings from
Halifax and Nationwide.
“The renewed jump in mortgage
rates started to depress prices in
July,” Gabriella Dickens, senior UK
economist, said. “We doubt prices
will pick up later this year either.”
Both Halifax and Nationwide’s
recent indices suggested that fur-
ther price falls are coming. While
the ONS estimates that house
prices have fallen by less than 1 per
cent from their peak, Nationwide
said that figure is more than 5 per
cent.
Prices are falling fastest in
Wales, the ONS said, with house
values 0.1 per cent lower in July
than a year earlier, while annual
price growth in Scotland slowed to
0.1 per cent. In England, prices in-
creased by 0.6 per cent in the 12
months to July, with London being
the weakest-performing regional
market. However, it has been over-
taken by the southwest, where
prices fell 1 per cent.
In a separate report, the ONS
confirmed that rents are rising at
the fastest pace on record — up 5.5
per cent in the 12 months to
August.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
Ryan Bourne
Consumers will learn to love
the rise of dynamic pricing
‘‘
The recent
breathless panic
about the spread of
“dynamic pricing”
has been pretty
puzzling for economists. Widely
used by airlines, hotels and the likes
of Uber, algorithms that adjust prices
in real time to demand and supply
conditions are broadly accepted
to have granted consumers more
choices and businesses more
flexibility in those industries.
Now, with dynamic pricing
spreading into entertainment and
hospitality, certain consumer rights
groups are demanding that the
Competition and Markets Authority
step in, talking as if customers are
evidently being ripped off. I’m
mystified: the available data and
experience show that consumers
have little to fear and much to gain
from the proliferation of this practice.
It’s true that the rollout of dynamic
pricing to new sectors is ruffling some
feathers. Stonegate, which operates
4,500 pubs, has been criticised for
applying a 20p per pint surcharge at
peak times in certain venues.
Concertgoers have been frustrated by
wildly fluctuating prices for Harry
Styles tickets on selling platforms.
Dynamic pricing is more advanced
here in the States, but even I was
taken aback last week by a bowling
alley in Washington charging 70 per
cent more on Friday than Tuesday.
As a matter of economics, there’s
nothing new here. We’ve long
accepted that evening theatre tickets
will be more expensive than matinees,
that we’ll cough up more for flights
over Christmas, or pay more for
resorts during school holidays. Pubs?
They do dynamic pricing already: it’s
called “happy hour”. Dynamic pricing
just reflects those age-old supply and
demand forces changing prices more
frequently through snazzy algorithms.
Concern seems to arise, though,
when such pricing infiltrates new
sectors where we’re accustomed to
price stability. No one yet strolls into
KFC wondering if they’ll get cheaper
chicken before lunchtime. Milk is no
more expensive in Tesco during the
post-work rush. There’s obvious value
to consumers in such predictability.
It’s a trust pact: you know what you’re
getting for your pound, avoiding the
need to search between stores, and
businesses safeguard their reputation.
Now, though, the economics have
The fluctuating price of a ticket for a Harry Styles concert sparked a backlash
changed. Algorithmic technology has
reduced the cost of doing dynamic
pricing — and businesses in
entertainment, online marketplaces
and even restaurants are
experimenting. Time-invariant prices
have downsides, after all: lost revenue
from long queues or product
shortages during demand surges, the
underutilisation of staff and capacity
at off-peak times, and customers
flogging tickets at higher prices in
black markets. Dynamic pricing
mitigates this, meaning more profit
opportunities — as long as consumers
don’t rebel en masse.
This potential boost to profits is
why zero-sum critics assume dynamic
pricing is anti-consumer. The Nobel
prize-winning economist Richard
Thaler noted in the 1980s that much
of the public saw higher demand, as
opposed to higher costs, as an
illegitimate source of rising prices.
Charging more, even when
consumers willingly paid up, was
“greedy profiteering”. The mainstream
discourse seems predicated on new
technologies squeezing more from us
“for the same product”.
Yet this framing is simplistic and
wrong. Dynamic pricing is a boon for
consumers. On two-sided platforms,
where supply adjusts to fluctuating
demand, flexible pricing delivers a
better continuity of service. Where
there’s a finite capacity of seats or
tickets, flexible pricing ensures space
goes to those who most value it, while
opening access to off-peak services
through lower prices.
Uber’s surge pricing doesn’t just
jack up riders’ costs when demand
soars, for example, but offers drivers a
carrot to keep on the road. Research
keeps showing that it’s a win for users
overall: wait times are steadier with
dynamic-priced Ubers than uniform-
priced taxis, while surges ensure more
trips are completed than otherwise.
Rationing by price means those
riders with immediate, pressing needs
can still access cars; those with other
options, or willing to wait, can opt out.
Airlines vary prices based on flight
dates, the number of remaining seats
and sometimes even booking times.
Who benefits? Overwhelmingly, the
lower-income leisure traveller. By
enhancing airlines’ profitability,
dynamic pricing models, combined
with the unbundling of charges for
seat selection and bags, drew new
budget airlines into the sector,
bringing more flights at lower prices.
It’s not difficult to conceive of
similar benefits beyond dynamic
pricing’s current applications. Imagine
roads where tolls changed based on
expected traffic flows, deterring
jam-packed commutes. Or energy
price fluctuations eradicating the
chance of power outages. Flexible
pricing for cinemas, bowling alleys or
supermarkets could smooth customer
flow and grant off-peak customers a
sweeter deal. Some will pay more, yes,
but they will still do so voluntarily.
Yet the knee-jerk reaction of some
“consumer champions” is to focus on
perceived injustices. James Daley of
Fairer Finance was unintentionally
revealing when he told The Times:
“I’m very much against [dynamic
pricing] . . . The principle at the
moment is ‘if you are willing to pay it’
it is a fair price, which of course is not
fair.” Sorry? If consumer and seller
voluntarily agree on a price, judging
themselves enriched by the deal, what
exactly is the rip-off?
Representatives of Which?
magazine worry that the lack of
transparency about how dynamic
pricing operates could leave some
customers paying more than they
need to, especially when they are
unfamiliar with it. Yet, as Uber shows,
earning customers’ repeat trade
already provides businesses with
strong incentives to provide such
information, if consumers want it.
Ultimately, how far dynamic pricing
permeates our lives will be thrashed
out by these interactions between
businesses’ needs and customers’
wants. What would be strange is to
just assume there’s something
inherently pernicious about it, and
’’
for the competition watchdog to
impose restrictive
rules that constrain
it out of some
arbitrary conception
of fairness.
Ryan Bourne is R Evan Scharf chair for
the Public Understanding of Economics
at the Cato Institute and author of the
recent book Economics in One Virus
37
Business
NatWest
lines up CBI
return and
rescue plan
Alex Ralph, Ben Martin
NatWest is considering rejoining the
CBI and supporting a rescue funding
package with a group of other large
banks in an attempt to save the troubled
business lobby group.
The high street lender could resume
its membership subscription after
being encouraged by signs that the gov-
ernment is prepared to re-engage with
the organisation, Sky News reported.
The CBI was forced on Tuesday to
postpone its annual meeting the day
before it was due to be held as it grap-
ples with “short-term cashflow challen-
ges”. The 58-year-old royal charter
organisation was one of Britain’s most
influential business membership
groups but has been fighting for surviv-
al after a workplace misconduct scan-
dal this year, including allegations of
sexual misconduct and rape, which led
to an exodus of corporate members.
Despite postponing the annual
meeting, Brian McBride, the CBI’s pres-
ident, and Rain Newton-Smith, its new
director-general, addressed members
yesterday, where they said they were
confident of the CBI overcoming its fi-
nancial problems. One source who at-
tended the online event said members
were left reassured its “financial posi-
tion had been secured, which is good
news — not least for all the staff there”.
A spokesman for the CBI, however,
reiterated a statement circulated to
members on Tuesday that said: “We are
in positive dialogue over finalising
financing options and are confident we
will be able to resolve this short-term
issue and secure the footing of an orga-
nisation that remains in a strong medi-
um to long-term position.”
NatWest was among some of Brit-
ain’s biggest companies to quit the CBI
in April, alongside Aviva, KPMG and
the John Lewis Partnership. The gov-
ernment also cut ties this year after rev-
elations in the Guardian newspaper.
However, chancellor Jeremy Hunt is
prepared to meet the CBI ahead of
November’s autumn statement, and
NatWest, Lloyds Banking Group and
HSBC are in talks about providing
several million pounds of short-term fi-
nancing, Sky News reported.
The exodus of members has eroded
the CBI’s cash reserves and forced it to
close international offices in the US,
India and China, and to cut about a
third of its workforce. The CBI, which
in previous years had held its annual
event in June, is still hoping to host the
meeting before the end of the year.
38 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

Business

Philip Morris considers stake sale

as inhaler plans go up in smoke
Alex Ralph
Chief Business Correspondent
The maker of Marlboro cigarettes is
considering selling a stake in the respi-
ratory drugs company it contentiously
bought two years ago as its transforma-
tion away from tobacco falters.
Philip Morris International, one of
the world’s largest tobacco firms, is con-
sidering options for Vectura and has
held discussions with Deutsche Bank,
according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Times reported in July that
Philip Morris’s pharmaceutical busi-
ness had suffered a series of senior
departures, amid other setbacks. Its
£1 billion acquisition of Vectura in 2021
triggered a backlash from the public
health sector as the company, based in
Wiltshire, develops inhalers and medi-
cines, including for smoking-related
conditions. A coalition of public health
bodies, clinicians and charities wrote to
Vectura’s shareholders and directors to
warn that it could “hamper [the com-
pany’s] ability to continue operating as
a viable, research-oriented business”.
Jacek Olczak, the tobacco group’s
chief executive, had strongly defended
the deal, saying Vectura was central to
Philip Morris’s diversification into the
healthcare and wellness sectors.
One source said yesterday: “We told
you so. [Philip Morris] were so arrogant,
they didn’t listen at the time on how
difficult this is. Having a tobacco com-
pany as your parent puts so many more
hurdles in place. They have taken a
great company and destroyed value.
“Question marks exist around the
board and fiduciary duty. [Vectura was]
sold at the highest price to a company
that has virtually destroyed its value.”
Philip Morris booked a $680 million
impairment charge in its wellness and
healthcare division at its half-year
results in July. This was due to unsuc-
cessful clinical trial results for its inha-
lable aspirin product, as well as delays
in expanding contract development
and manufacturing “including challen-
ges associated with increased cost
related to certain products”.
Philip Morris acquired the Asprihale
inhaler system through the acquisition
of OtiTopic, an American respiratory
drugs developer, in August 2021. It said
then it expected to move from clinical
trials to filing with the US Food and
Drug Administration for approval last
year. But after disappointing clinical
trial results and various delays, Philip
Morris said it no longer expected to
reach more than $1 billion of net reve-
nues for the wellness and healthcare
business by 2025 — a key target at the
time of the Vectura deal — and would
reduce investment next year.
The setbacks have led to concerns
about the progress of a new £58 million
inhalation centre in the Bristol and
Bath Science Park. Planning permis-
sion was secured in September last year
Successful
and Philip Morris said then that the
building would be completed in 2025.
operation for
Rae Maile, a tobacco analyst at
Panmure Gordon, the City broker, said robosurgeon
the tobacco industry had been “seeking

C
various routes of diversification since
the 1950s — food, beer, financial ser-
vices, retailing and perfume — but the
results of such efforts have been mixed
at best”. He added: “In the meantime it
is still smokers who generate the cash-
flow used for all the new plans.”
Philip Morris told investors at its
half-year results it would be “exploring
potential partnerships to enhance” its
contract development and manufac-
turing business to grow Vectura.
MR Surgical, the medical
robotics group, has tapped
investors for a further
$165 million to fund the
expansion of its operating
theatre capabilities and global
footprint (Simon Freeman writes).
SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, China’s
Tencent and Spain’s Escala Capital
participated, following on from the
$600 million raised in 2021. That

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the times | Thursday September 21 2023
round valued the Cambridge-based
start-up at about $3 billion, making
it the UK’s largest private medical
technology company.
CMR has developed Versius, a
system of robot arms controlled by
a surgeon using a modified
PlayStation controller that can
manipulate tiny needles, scalpels
and tweezers to perform minimally
invasive keyhole surgery.
The increased precision results in
shorter operations with fewer
complications, a lower risk of
infection and quicker recoveries
than regular surgery. It can also
prolong the working life of
surgeons, who suffer the physical
strain of prolonged operations on
their own backs and necks.
£143m offer hits sweet spot for baker
Dominic Walsh
A bakery firm that supplies Britain’s big
supermarket chains has agreed to be
taken private in a deal worth £143.4 mil-
lion.
Finsbury Food Group, which has
been a listed company since 2002, is set
to be acquired by DBay Advisors, an as-
set management company based in the
Isle of Man, at a price of 110p a share.
News of the deal, which has been rec-
ommended by the Finsbury board, sent
shares in the company soaring by 21p,
or 23.6 per cent, to 110p at the close —
just shy of the offer price.
The cash offer represents a premium
of 23.6 per cent to last night’s close of
89p, and a premium of 54.9 per cent to
the 71p the shares were trading at on
September 2.
As an alternative to receiving cash for
their shares via a scheme of arrange-
ment, Finsbury shareholders can opt to
take non-voting B ordinary shares in
Frisbee Bidco, the bidding company, for
each share held.
John Duffy, 58, chief executive of
More than 140 Versius units have
been installed in hospitals in the
UK, Europe, Latin America, the
Middle East, Asia and Africa, and
have been used in more than 15,000
procedures including colectomies,
hernia repairs and hysterectomies.
The new capital will fund product
development and support sales of
the system into new countries.
CMR estimates that the global
market is worth more than
$7 billion and is growing at 15 per
cent a year.
US rival Intuitive Surgical,
founded almost 25 years ago, is also
vying for market share: its da Vinci
system has been adopted by NHS
hospitals in Somerset and Scotland.
Supratim Bose, who took over as
Finsbury, said he would vote his
2.87 million shares in favour of the
alternative offer “as he wishes to hold
an investment in Finsbury”. They are
worth £3.2 million at the offer
price. Investec, however,
which holds 11.7 million
shares, plans to back
the cash offer.
Finsbury Food
makes cakes and
bread for several
big names across
both the grocery
retail market and
the “out-of-home
eating” food service
sector in the UK and
Europe. It has manu-
facturing sites in the UK
and Poland, plus an 85 per
cent stake in a French business
that supplies Finsbury products in
Europe.
DBay, which has offices in Douglas
Finsbury supplies cakes and pastries
to several British supermarket chains
CMR’s Versius system performs a
keyhole operation at an NHS hospital
under the control of a surgeon
CMR chief executive in March,
said: “More and more surgeons and
patients are benefiting from Versius
and our latest funding round will
allow us to serve even more
customers, supporting our
continued growth in existing
markets, as well as expansion into
new key markets.”
Umur Hursever, a partner at LGT
Lightrock, which joined the raise,
added: “CMR is one of those
innovators that are blazing a trail
with Versius, which democratises
robotic surgery both procedurally
and geographically.”
and London, was founded in 2011 and
predominantly invests in quoted equi-
ties. It said it had “followed Finsbury’s
story for some time” and started buying
shares in the company in
August last year, building
a 13.6 per cent holding.
Peter Baker, 70, the
Finsbury chairman,
said: “For the next
phase of [our] de-
velopment, the
business will need
to pursue strate-
gic, transforma-
tional mergers and
acquisitions to
achieve the scale re-
quired to be successful
in an increasingly com-
petitive and demanding
marketplace.”
Finsbury’s directors intend to unani-
mously recommend the offer to share-
holders before a general meeting to
vote on the deal, which is expected to
complete in the final three months of
this year.
Oxford Biomedica
shares boosted after
chief reveals reset
Alex Ralph
The boss of Oxford Biomedica is to re-
position the company as a “pure-play”
contract drugs manufacturer as he un-
veiled a new, long-awaited strategy.
Frank Mathias, 61, who took charge
in March, made a large cut to Oxford
Biomedica’s forecasts this year and out-
lined a renewed cost-cutting drive that
includes about 170 job losses in Oxford.
He also gave details on an acquisition to
expand the business in Europe and
longer-term growth forecasts.
Oxford Biomedica is a cell and gene
therapy specialist spun out of Oxford
University in 1996. One of Britain’s
more successful biotech companies, its
finances, share price and profile were
all boosted as it manufactured Covid-19
vaccines for AstraZeneca, but its stock
has since slumped amid a drop in reve-
nues from Covid jabs as the pandemic
fades.
Shares in Oxford Biomedica, which
hit about £16 two years ago before fall-
ing to a six-year low this year, rose 27½p,
or 11.4 per cent, to 269p, valuing the
company at £262 million after at its
half-year results yesterday.
Mathias, who had been chief execu-
tive of Rentschler Biopharma in Ger-
many since 2016 and was among a
number of directors buying shares in
the company yesterday, said he was “re-
setting” the business to focus purely on
providing services to the pharma in-
dustry and would spin off its residual
product development business.
“With the cell and gene therapy in-
dustry at an inflection point, I believe
that we are in the right market at the
right time, and well-equipped to suc-
ceed with our highly skilled workforce
and leading-edge technology,” he said.
To boost its capacity as a contract de-
velopment and manufacturing organi-
sation (CDMO), expand in the Euro-
Elementis rebuffs activist
investor’s break-up plan
Helen Cahill
An activist investor has called for
Elementis to put itself up for sale
following the “shocking” decline of its
share price over the past seven years.
Franklin Mutual, the US fund man-
ager that holds a 9.8 per cent stake in
the chemicals group, prompted a sharp
rise in Elementis’s share price after
declaring in an open letter that the
company “could be a desirable acquisi-
tion target”.
The investor said that a buyer in the
industrial or chemicals sector could
secure significant cost savings with an
acquisition and that the company’s
“stagnant share price” was far below
previous bids for the business.
City sources suggested that Elemen-
tis could attract bids of between 198p
and 225p a share after it elicited a
130p-a-share bid from Minerals Tech-
nologies in 2020.
Elementis’s share price rose 11¾p, or
10.6 per cent, to 123½p yesterday.
The board of Elementis said in a
statement that it did not regard a
sale “to be in the best interests of its
shareholders”.
The company added: “The board
regularly views the company’s strategic
alternatives with its financial advisers.
39
Business
pean Union and serve customers on
both sides of the Atlantic, Oxford Bio-
medica has entered into exclusive ne-
gotiations to acquire ABL Europe from
Institut Mérieux for €15 million.
The deal includes €10 million of pre-
completion cash funding in ABL
Europe in exchange for Institut Mér-
ieux becoming a large shareholder in
Oxford Biomedica at a significant
premium to its current price.
The acquisition follows last year’s
£134 million deal with Homology Medi-
cines, a Nasdaq-listed competitor,
where Oxford Biomedica took an
80 per cent stake in a joint venture fo-
cused on adeno-associated virus vec-
tors, the largest part of the gene and cell
therapy market. However, Homology
has announced a strategic review and a
halt to development programmes, and
Oxford Biomedica is carrying out an
impairment review of the joint venture.
Total revenue fell by a third to
£43.1 million — below City forecasts,
partly weakened by the absence of Cov-
id vaccine revenue — in the six months
to the end of June, and operating losses
on an earnings before interest, tax, de-
preciation and amortisation basis wid-
ened to £33.7 million from £5.8 million
a year earlier.
It meant that revenues this year are
expected to be about £90 million due to
lower milestone and licence payments
and reduced or delayed bioprocessing
orders from clients.
Setting out new guidance, Oxford
Biomedica said it expected three-year
revenue compound annual growth of
more than 30 per cent, resulting in at
least a doubling of revenues by the end
of 2026 compared to this year.
It also expected to “broadly” break
even by the end of next year, helped by
£30 million worth of cost-cutting, and is
targeting margins of more than 20 per
cent by the end of 2026.
Our board does not believe that Frank-
lin’s request to initiate an immediate
sale of the company is currently in the
best interests of its shareholders, given
the substantial value still to be realised.”
Elementis was set up in 1844 as a tea
and coffee trader, later diversifying into
the making and selling of chemicals
used in cosmetics and cars.
Steve Raineri and Chris Meeker of
Franklin Mutual Advisers outlined
their concerns in a letter to the Elemen-
tis board. They said the decline in the
company’s share price since 2016 repre-
sented “a shocking amount of share-
holder value destruction” and urged di-
rectors to commit themselves to a for-
mal sales process by October 31.
The letter added: “While we fre-
quently engage with companies re-
garding various shareholder matters in
private, we rarely do so in public.
However, we believe it is in the best in-
terest of all shareholders to be aware of
these issues.”
Analysts at Jefferies said the letter
“again raises an interesting debate over
the group’s outlook and valuation”.
They added: “We think Elementis is
cheap, especially if management can
deliver upon expectations, trading
below its ten-year average. Today’s de-
velopment is fascinating.”
40
Business
M&G makes surprise return
to pension buyout market
Patrick Hosking Financial Editor
The FTSE 100 fund manager M&G and
its UK life insurance subsidiary,
Prudential Assurance, are pushing
back into the pension scheme buyouts
sector seven years after pulling out on
the grounds that the business was too
capital-intensive.
The fund management group re-
vealed that it had just done two so-
called bulk annuity deals in the past few
months as it reported a 31 per cent rise
in first-half adjusted operating profit to
£390 million.
In one deal it took over the £331 mil-
lion assets and liabilities of an in-house
M&G staff pension scheme. It has also
struck a £286 million buyout with an
unnamed third party.
While the group stressed it was not
going to chase the biggest deals, it said
its return into defined benefit (DB) pen-
sion scheme de-risking was “a key com-
ponent of our strategy”, and will be seen
as significant.
Under its Prudential Corporation
parent, Prudential Assurance used to
be a major player in bulk annuity deals
up until January 2016, when it effective-
Wincanton can revive dividends after turnaround
Patrick Hosking
Wincanton, the trucking and ware-
housing group, has been released from
restrictions on dividends and share
buybacks after an eye-catching turn-
around for its deficit-plagued staff pen-
sion scheme.
Shares in the company rose 38p, or
15.5 per cent, to close at 283p after it dis-
closed that it would no longer have to
make previously agreed contributions
to the retirement scheme of £23.6 mil-
lion this year and £25 million for each of
the following three years.
Wincanton was also being released
from conditions on dividends and buy-
backs that required it to make matching
payments to the pension scheme if it
wanted to raise shareholder payouts by
more than 10 per cent a year.
ly pulled out, saying that the Solvency
II Capital rules no longer made it pay.
The Pru bolted together its M&G arm
with Prudential Assurance and de-
merged the combined entity in 2019 to
leave it free to focus on Asian markets.
The U-turn pitches M&G against a
handful of big insurers in the sector in-
cluding Legal & General, Aviva, Phoe-
nix, Canada Life and Rothesay Life.
Andrea Rossi, chief executive, said:
“We saw an opportunity to selectively
revisit the market, which has become
much larger.” A push into the space
played into M&G’s strengths in asset
management and in particular private
assets, he added.
Employers are lining up to rid them-
selves of legacy pension funds that are
suddenly in much better shape — and
therefore jettisonable — after the ex-
traordinary surge in bond yields over
the past two years.
Most of these schemes have few cur-
rent employees still in them and are
seen as costly, volatile distractions.
Most employers have closed their DB
schemes to new members and new ac-
crual, putting employees in cheaper de-
fined contribution schemes instead.
The pension scheme rebounded to
an actuarial surplus of £3.9 million as at
March 31, a swing from a deficit of
£154 million in 2020 and £250 million in
2017 — the first time it has been in the
black for at least 22 years.
“It’s been a big burden,” Tom Hinton,
chief financial officer, said. Over the
past five years, Wincanton has had to
put in £100 million of contributions,
which compares with the £50 million to
£60 million paid out in dividends.
The strong rise in bond yields in the
past two years has improved the health
of most defined-benefit (DB) pension
schemes. Many are also being boosted
by caps on inflation-linked rises to pen-
sion payments.
The scheme, with assets of £1.2 bil-
lion, dwarfs the sponsoring company,
which is valued at £340 million. It has
Phoenix chief executive Andy Briggs
said this week that several pension
schemes worth £10 billion or more were
inquiring about deals. BP is reportedly
preparing for a partial buyout of its
£30 billion scheme.
Rossi declared the results to June as
showing progress against ongoing
market volatility. Assets under man-
agement shrank in the six-month
£333bn
M&G’s assets under management —
down from £342bn six months earlier
period from £342 billion to £333 billion,
mostly because of falling markets,
while the group recorded a small
£100 million net outflow.
Strong net inflows from retail fund
sales of £1.3 billion were offset by
£1.4 billion pulled out by institutional
investors, many of them requiring li-
quidity in the wake of the liability-driv-
en investment (LDI) crisis.
“Yes, we’ve had outflows, but we’ve
12,800 members, most of them former
and current drivers and workers. It was
closed to new members in 2005 and to
new accrual in 2014.
Hinton said it was too early to talk
about doing a buy-out deal with an in-
surer. While the scheme is now in actu-
arial surplus, it would cost an estimated
premium of £60 million to £70 million
to in effect hand over all assets and lia-
bilities to an insurer and sever all re-
sponsibility for the scheme.
He dismissed as “very difficult” chan-
cellor Jeremy Hunt’s Mansion House
proposals that DB schemes should be
encouraged to invest in more produc-
tive assets. “If you’ve got a pension
scheme that’s managed to [eliminate its
deficit], the last thing you want to do is
invest in high-risk assets.”
Wincanton ferries and stores goods
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Holly Willoughby, the
television presenter,
promotes the
furnishings chain
had significant inflows, too, and they
are of higher quality,” said Rossi, a
former senior manager at Axa, who
succeeded John Foley last October.
The company said it was on track to
achieve its target of generating £2.5 bil-
lion of operating capital by the end of
2024 and was already 53 per cent of the
way there after 18 months. It was also
making good progress on its 2025 tar-
gets, which include £200 million of
annual cost savings and reducing asset
management costs to sustainably be-
low 70 per cent of income.
Around 200 people will be leaving as
part of a redundancy scheme in the
final months of 2023 or early in 2024.
This and other measures would reduce
costs by £50 million.
M&G declared a 5 per cent increase
in the interim dividend to 6.5p. After
this is paid out in November, the com-
pany will have returned £2.5 billion to
shareholders in dividends and buy-
backs since 2019. Its share price since
then is down by around 10 per cent after
rising 3¼p, or 1.6 per cent, to 202¾p yes-
terday. The solvency coverage ratio was
unchanged at 199 per cent.
for a wide range of clients including
Waitrose and the builders of the Hink-
ley Point C nuclear power station.
Dunelm looks
Founded in 1925, it was demerged from
Uniq in 2001 and floated in London. It
to move in on
employs 20,000 people today.
With the Pensions Regulator con- Wilko stores
cerned about cash being paid out by
D
companies with schemes in heavy unelm expects to acquire
deficit, it agreed restrictions on divi- a number of former
dends with the scheme trustees in 2017 Wilko sites as it doubles
and renewed the conditions in 2020. the rate of its store
Gerald Khoo at Liberum argued that opening plans, the
it was a better pensions out-turn than homeware retailer’s boss has said
expected for Wincanton. He said: “The (Isabella Fish writes).
cessation of pension contributions Nick Wilkinson, chief executive,
should provide a significant boost to said the FTSE 250 company had
free cashflow. We see scope to enhance looked at some of the Wilko stores
cash returns to shareholders, while that will soon “end up with a
continuing to invest in organic growth Dunelm above the door”.
and retaining a low level of leverage.”
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 41

Pendragon rejects offer
from largest shareholder
Robert Lea Industrial Editor
Pendragon, the car dealer that this
week accepted a 27.4p a share takeover
deal from Lithia Motors, the US group,
yesterday rejected a 28p a share offer,
worth $486 million, from its largest
shareholder and a long-time critic.
Two days after Pendragon agreed a
complex deal that would see the demer-
ger of its Stratstone and Evans Halshaw
forecourts from its Pinewood dealer-
ship software management system,
Sweden’s Hedin joined with another US
motor group, Penske, to attempt to de-
rail the transaction.
Hedin is a dealership group that
owns 26 per cent of Pendragon and has
been advised by Pendragon’s former
boss, Trevor Finn. Penske is the US
group that owns Pendragon’s arch-rival
Sytner, Britain’s largest motor dealer.
Hedin has been critical of Pendrag-
on’s leadership under chief executive
Bill Berman. Last year it made offers at
28p and 29p a share and declared that
while it might be prepared to accept a
rival takeover offer, it would not accept
any pitched at less than 35p a share.
Pendragon employs 5,300 people
across 160 sites. In a statement, the
board said it had “unanimously re-
jected an unsolicited and preliminary
proposal” from Hedin and Penske that
came with “a number of conditions, in-
cluding the completion of due diligence
and external debt financing” and “no
certainty that any firm offer will be
Business
made.” The Pendragon board said the
counter-offer “fundamentally under-
values the company”.
Hedin’s status as kingmaker in any
transaction has been weakened by Pen-
dragon’s board stating that it is pre-
pared to accept 51 per cent shareholder
agreement for the Lithia deal.
The Lithia offer is marginally lower
than that of Hedin and Penske but Pen-
dragon argues that it potentially offers
its shareholders long-term upsides.
The offer values Pendragon’s dealer-
ship at about £250 million, or 16.5p a
share, which Pendragon has said will be
returned to shareholders via a
£240 million special dividend.
Pendragon shareholders would keep
an 83 per cent stake in the Pinewood
business. It would retain Pendragon’s
London Stock Exchange listing and,
after a £30 million cash injection by
Lithia, would be valued at about
£180 million — worth 10.3p a share to
Pendragon shareholders. It is argued
that as a technology business, Pine-
wood should attract a better investor
rating than Pendragon as a car dealer.
Shareholders have also been offered
a stake in a Pinewood/Lithia joint ven-
ture in the US, which Pendragon says is
worth another 0.6p a share.
Pendragon shares had risen from
18½p earlier in the week to 23¾p after
agreement of the Lithia offer. Following
news of Hedin’s approach, the shares
rose again, up 3¼p, or 14 per cent, to
close at 27p, a nine-month high.

The Leicester-based retailer,
which has 180 branches and sells
curtains, bedding and furniture,
expects to open between five to ten
branches in each of the next two
years. That is up from the three to
five average over the past five years.
Upcoming launches include taking
space at the former John Lewis
store in Watford.
Wilkinson said: “[Wilko] had 400
shops and we’re talking about five
to ten shops a year, so we’re not one
of the players to say we’d like to
take on a tranche of stores. But I
suspect what will happen is that as
stores go back to landlords . .. there
will be an opportunity to pick up
[some of those shops].”
The Dunelm boss said it wanted
to target stores in “urban areas” in
southeast England and London,
where the retailer is not so
prevalent. “We will open in areas of
denser population .. . to reduce
drive time and make it more
convenient for customers. We
would love to have more stores in
the inner London boroughs.”
His comments came as the
retailer posted another upbeat
trading update. It reported “record”
revenues of £1.64 billion in the year
to July 1, rising 5.5 per cent from
last year’s figures as the British
retail chain benefited from soggy
summer weather and lowering its
prices on a range of goods.
“It’s been a long, wet summer and
people have been spending lots of
time indoors and improving their
homes,” Wilkinson said. “We’ve
seen lots of growth across lighting,
rugs, occasional furniture and
occasional chairs, through to
and grow their
companies as the UK
heritage categories like bedding
and curtains.”
The furnishings provider said
T economy recovers from
profit before tax had slid 7.8 per
cent to £192 million, with the group
the impact of high
blaming a tightening on operational inflation and the cost
controls and the impact of cost
inflation. The drop in profit was of living crisis
expected, thanks to an extensive
update in July, but still sent
investors running for the exit
Enterprise Sign up now for The
Times Enterprise
yesterday: the shares fell by 23p, or
2.1 per cent, to £10.60. Network Network’s weekly
The company said it expected to
News, inspiration and newsletter for tips and
see sales and profit growth in the
full year and noted a cool-down in insight from Britain’s
freight costs, which could support
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its margins. leaders on how to run thetimes.co.uk/ten

‘Play fair’, insurance firms warned

Ben Martin Banking Editor
The City regulator has warned the
insurance industry of its concerns
that companies are short-changing
their customers by selling poor value
products.
In a wide-ranging intervention, the
Financial Conduct Authority has
written to every insurance firm tell-
ing them to improve their treatment
of consumers. It also raised specific
concerns about guaranteed asset pro-
tection (GAP) insurance, which is
sold as an add-on to car cover, and
gave insurers a three-month ultima-
tum to improve the value for money
provided by this product.
Motor policies cover only the cost
of replacing a car at its current market
value, rather than the price originally
paid for the vehicle. Cars fall in value
as soon as they leave a dealership’s
forecourt; the idea behind GAP prod-
ucts is to cover the difference
between a vehicle’s original and cur-
rent value if it is stolen or written off.
Yet the regulator has found that on-
ly 6 per cent of the premiums that
customers pay on GAP products is
actually paid out in claims.
“The FCA has seen examples of
some firms paying out up to 70 per
cent of the value of insurance premi-
ums in commission to parties in the
distribution chain, such as motor
dealerships,” it said.
It warned that it had given insurers
that design GAP policies three
months to “take immediate action to
prove customers are getting a fair
deal”, otherwise it will intervene.
It is the latest in a series of clamp-
downs by the FCA on the insurance
sector and comes as consumers
shoulder big increases in premiums
over the past year as insurers rush to
lift prices to offset inflation, which
has pushed up claims costs.
At the start of last year, the watch-
dog brought in new rules banning in-
surers from raising prices for existing
customers every year while offering
new customers cheaper deals. The
aim was to eliminate the “loyalty pen-
alty” levied on customers who stick
with their insurer year after year. The
regulator also started to publish firm-
level data on claims payouts last year
as part of efforts to ensure customers
receive fair value from insurers.
Yesterday’s intervention comes
less than two months after the FCA’s
new Consumer Duty pledge came in-
to force — a set of tough new rules
aimed at forcing all financial services
companies to put the interests of their
customers first.
Matt Brewis, the regulator’s direct-
or of insurance, said: “This is an early
signal of the work we’ll be doing
under Consumer Duty. Customers
should be reassured that we’re in
their corner and are taking action
where we see poor value being pro-
vided.”
The Association of British Insurers,
an industry lobby group, said: “Our
members fully understand the im-
portance of providing fair value to
customers and work hard to deliver it.
“We’ll discuss the FCA’s concerns
with them to understand where any
further action could be taken.”
42
Business Markets
Emma Powell Tempus
Buy, sell or hold: today’s best share tips
Holding this asset will pay dividends
m&g
Market cap Dividend yield
£4.71bn 9.7%
T
akeover talk has not left
M&G since it was spun out
of the Asia-focused insurer
Prudential four years ago.
The asset management
specialist has been valued at a
perennial discount to peers. Despite
the shares outperforming rivals like
Jupiter, Schroders and Abrdn since
the demerger, they still trade at an
undemanding ten times forward
earnings. That leaves the group in
play for an acquirer that could strip
out costs from the business.
Andrea Rossi, the boss of the
FTSE 100 constituent, has put in
place a three-year plan to cut costs
by £200 million (excluding inflation),
bring down the cost-to-income ratio
of its asset management arm to
below 70 per cent and reduce
leverage to sub-30 per cent. Top of
the pile is a target to generate
£2.5 billion in capital a year earlier.
Progress towards these goals has
been mixed. Capital generation came
in at £505 million over the first half
of the year, way ahead of a consensus
forecast of £328 million and an
increase on the £433 million over the
same period last year. That leaves
the group over halfway to hitting its
cash generation target by the end of
the next financial year, having
churned out £1.3 billion in 18 months.
But it is worth noting that the
annual increase, and a quarter of
supermarket income reit
Dividend yield Net asset value
7.8% per share 98p
C
ooler inflation data released
yesterday raised expectations
that the Bank may hold off on
increasing interest rates, or at least
that monetary tightening is nearing
its peak. If accurate, London-listed
property groups should be in store
for some much-needed relief.
For Supermarket Income Reit,
whose tenant base is dominated by
Britain’s big four grocery chains,
there are signs that the value of its
estate might have already reached
the bottom.
PRICES
Major indices
Bid target?
Share price
Source: Factset
2020 2021 2022
ADVICE Hold
WHY The group is a potential
takeover target and offers a
high dividend yield
capital generated last year, was
driven by switching out of equity and
towards higher-yielding fixed income
for its with-profits funds. The more
important underlying capital
generation — turned out by the core
asset management and retail and
savings businesses — was dented as
institutional clients pulled out cash.
The health of the asset
management arm is key to M&G
The underlying value of its
properties at the end of June was flat
on the end of last year, which kept its
tangible net asset value (NAV) at
93p, ahead of analyst expectations.
That makes the shares’ 14 per cent
discount against the NAV forecast by
analysts for the end of this financial
year more of an appealing trait than
a warning sign. Analysts think the
NAV will return to growth at the end
of June next year.
The sale of a group of 26 stores
back to Sainsbury’s earlier this year
banked £431 million for the Reit, part
of which was reinvested into cheaper
supermarket properties and the rest
into paying down debt.
That has reduced the company’s
Adjusted operating profit
300p
H1, 2021 H1, 2022 H1, 2023
250 Asset management
£147m
£124m
200 £118m
150
Wealth
£5m
£93m
£91m
100
Heritage
50 £282m
£201m
£279m
0 heads out the door each year as
2023
sustaining its capital generation and
dividend over the longer term. The
cost-to-income ratio for that division
worsened to 79 per cent from 77 per
cent last year after costs rose by 7 per
cent and revenue declined by 3 per
cent during the period.
Net outflows from the business
amounted to another £100 million,
on top of the £200 million last year
after the mini-budget spooked
investors, and assets under
management were 5 per cent lower.
Outflows were clustered around
lower-margin fixed income mandates
from large investors, which blunted
the impact on the top line. But that
still puts the business a way off its
goal of a sub-70 per cent margin.
loan-to-value ratio to 34 per cent, a
comfortable leverage position that
means it could withstand a 40 per
cent fall in the value of its portfolio
— and that is from the current
depressed level — before it comes
near breaching its covenants.
Just over three quarters of the rent
roll is linked to a measure of inflation
on review, with a 4 per cent cap,
which explains a 2.7 per cent
underlying increase in rental income
last year. That gives a certain degree
of reliability to its income stream,
which has an average unexpired
lease term of 14 years.
The FTSE 250 constituent is now
targeting an increased dividend of
6.06p a share for the current
London Financial Futures
© 2021 Tradeweb Markets LLC. All rights reserved.
The Tradeweb FTSE Gilt Closing Prices information contained
herein is proprietary to Tradeweb; may not be copied or
re-distributed; is not warranted to be accurate, complete or timely; and does not constitute
investment advice. Tradeweb is not responsible for any loss or damage that might result
from the use of this information.
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
M&G’s key attraction is its beefy
dividend, which was raised to 6.5p a
share. Analysts think that payment
will amount to 20.08p this year,
which leaves the shares offering a
potential yield of 9.9 per cent at the
current price.
Can it be relied upon? In the near
future, it looks secure enough. Even
the £352 million generated by the
underlying business is easily clear of
the £153 million cost of the interim
dividend declared for the period.
Further off, investors might
question the sustainability of the
dividend. Just over half of the capital
generated by the firm in the first half
was turned out of the heritage
business, which is in run-off.
Between £1 billion and £1.5 billion
books mature, a figure offset by the
rest of the business.
Re-entering the bulk-purchase
annuity sector is one way that M&G
is looking to offset the shrinking
heritage business over the longer
term. Two deals worth a combined
£617 million have been completed
thus far.
There are plenty of areas that
could unlock value for a bidder.
Removing some of the organisational
complexity after its demerger from
Prudential is one. The private assets it
is building, amounting to £74 billion
at the end of March and accounting
for a quarter of the total being run by
its asset management arm, could also
be appealing for a rival looking to
diversify out of less profitable public
market investments.
financial year, which leaves the
shares offering a potential yield of
7.7 per cent at the current price.
Last year’s payment was uncovered
by adjusted earnings, pre-bulk
Sainsbury’s sale, but analysts believe
that this year’s payment will be
covered — just — by earnings.
That would make the discount
baked into the shares even harder to
justify.
ADVICE Buy
WHY The shares offer a
generous dividend yield
at a cheap valuation
Commodities
news in brief
‘Tuna bond’ ruling
Mozambique can sue Privinvest,
the shipbuilder, in Britain for
alleged bribery connected to the
$2 billion “tuna bond” scandal,
the Supreme Court has ruled.
Mozambique is suing Privinvest,
which did not respond to requests
for comment, its owner, Iskandar
Safa, Credit Suisse and others
over three loans raised in 2013
and 2014 to develop its fishing
industry. The African country
alleges the deals were corrupt
and left it exposed to a potential
liability of $2 billion. Credit
Suisse has said that three former
bankers hid their misconduct.
Lloyds branches axed
Lloyds Banking Group intends to
close a further 35 branches next
year in another blow to high
streets. The FTSE 100 lender set
out plans to shut 18 Lloyds sites,
15 Halifax branches and two
Bank of Scotland branches
between January and September.
The closures will reduce its
network to 1,107 sites. It said the
popularity of online banking
meant the latest branches it had
decided to shut had suffered
average falls in visits of 54 per
cent in the past five years.
Jet parts ‘forgery’ claim
Thousands of engine components
may have been sold with forged
paperwork by a British distributor,
CFM International, a US jet
engine maker, has told the High
Court. Matthew Reeve, a lawyer
for CFM and its co-owners
General Electric and Safran, said
that AOG Technics engaged in a
“deliberate, dishonest and
sophisticated scheme to deceive
the market with falsified
documents on an industrial scale”.
AOG did not respond to a request
for comment.
More choice for savers
The battle to attract current
account holders is gathering pace,
with Britain’s biggest building
society launching a £200
switching offer and a savings
account paying 8 per cent annual
equivalent rate of interest for
12 months. Nationwide said that
the offer was available to people
transferring a minimum of two
active direct debits to the account.
A regular savings account last
offered a rate of 8 per cent in
2013, according to Moneyfacts,
the financial information website.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
punters coming
Tenpin firm through the door. He
said he was committed
is on a roll to a value-for-money
for growth strategy but rather
than put up prices to
boost sales, the firm
E
nergy and food had lifted footfall via
prices may have refurbishments and
risen but the boss digital messaging.
of the Tenpin bowling Customer visits
brand is keeping a lid improved in the half-
on what he charges year from 4 million to
customers (Dominic 4.2 million.
Walsh writes). In the 26 weeks to
As well as restricting July 2, total sales at its
food and drink 51 bowling centres rose
inflation to 3.3 per by 3.3 per cent to
cent, Graham £65.3 million, with
Blackwell, 54, chief like-for-like sales up
executive of Ten 1.6 per cent. Adjusted
Entertainment Group, pre-tax profits
has cut the average improved slightly to
price per game from £15.8 million.
£5.21 in 2019 to £4.90 Blackwell said that,
this year to keep as well as taking over
The day’s biggest movers
Gold/Precious
metals
Because of a technical issue, the gold fix
prices are from Tuesday.
European money
deposits %
failed retail sites and
bespoke leisure
developments, the
group was on the hunt
for bigger acquisitions.
“We continually
review the market for
going-concern
acquisitions, so watch
this space,” he said.
“Everything is on the
table. We’ve got a
strong cash position.
We’re confident we can
step it up a gear if we
need to . . . the future is
bright.”
He said the second
half had started well,
with like-for-like sales
up 12.8 per cent,
thanks to the cool and
wet July. Shares in Ten
Entertainment fell by
9p, or 3.2 per cent, to
close at 275p.
Money rates %
Sterling spot and forward rates
Housebuilders shored up
by hope for interest rates
Jessica Newman Market report
T
he stock market landscape
for housebuilders looked
better yesterday than it has
in a long while. London’s
listed builders, hit hard by
the downturn in the UK property
market, became sought-after stocks as
data revealed a surprise and much
needed drop in inflation last month
— bolstering bets that the Bank of
England may not increase rates today.
Taylor Wimpey took the top spot
on the FTSE 100 risers’ board with a
gain of 6½p, or 5.6 per cent, to 121¾p.
Persimmon rose 53½p, or 5.1 per cent,
to £11.00, while Barratt Developments
was 21p, or 4.7 per cent, better off at
465½p. Not far behind was Berkeley
Group Holdings, which added 139p,
or 3.4 per cent, to £41.95.
The rally among housebuilders
Wall Street report
It was not so much the prospect of
one more rate rise this year that
pushed indices lower but rather the
Federal Reserve message that rates
will stay higher for longer. The Dow
Jones industrial average fell 76.85
points, or 0.2 per cent, to 34,440.88.
underpinned a rebound in the
FTSE 100, which marched
71.45 points, or 0.9 per cent, higher to
7,731.65, its best close in nearly four
months, while the more UK-focused
FTSE 250 climbed 285.67 points, or
1.6 per cent, to 18,712.37.
The upbeat inflation figures caused
investors to pile into property groups,
including the warehouse landlord
Segro, which gained 30p, or 4.1 per
cent, to 751¼p, while Unite, the
student halls provider, picked up 35p,
or 3.9 per cent, to 937½p.
British Land, which raised its
rental growth outlook this week, rose
12p, or 3.9 per cent, to 321¼p as
analysts at Stifel said the landlord’s
tilt towards retail parks “appears to
have been vindicated” with future
return prospects looking “promising”.
Kingfisher, which has suffered as a
result of waning demand in the home
improvement market, improved 9p, or
4.3 per cent, to 215¾p.
Leading the way on the FTSE 250
was Elementis, which put on 11¾p, or
43
Markets Business
consumer goods
Wheels come off at Tandem
C
ash-strapped £9.8 million. The
consumers and company has decided
poor summer not to declare an
weather has tipped interim dividend.
Tandem Group into Steve Grant,
the red. chairman of the
Shares in the group Birmingham-based
behind the Falcon and company, said that
Dawes bicycle brands, due to the challenging
which is listed on the trading backdrop the
Aim market, fell to board now anticipated
their lowest level in that the group’s full-
more than three years Fewer sunny days this year sales “will reduce
after it suffered a pre- summer saw spending between 11 per cent
tax loss of £900,000 on bicycles slashed and 13 per cent
in the six months to against market
the end of June, consumers’ disposable expectations”. He
against a £300,000 income, leading to added that the group
profit a year earlier. reduced spending. will be about break-
Tandem blamed First-half revenues even at an underlying
inflationary pressures,
higher interest rates
in its toys, sports and
leisure division
pre-tax profit level for
the year. The update
and “persistent dropped 44 per cent, sent Tandem’s shares
unfavourable” while total revenues down 47½p, or
weather conditions fell by almost a 22.6 per cent, to close
for impacting quarter to at 162½p.
10.6 per cent, to close at 123½p after Action, the private equity group’s
its largest shareholder called on the single biggest investment. The shares,
chemicals group to put itself up for which have risen more than 80 per
sale. Bytes Technology Group cent over the past 12 months, gave
followed suit, up 30p, or 6.3 per cent, back 31p, or 1.5 per cent, to £20.54.
to 503p as HSBC tipped its clients to Shares of Advanced Medical
buy the software seller, arguing that it Solutions have suffered, down more
should continue to deliver mid-teens than 22 per cent on the back of a
growth over the next three years. shocking profit warning at the start of
Close Brothers saw its shares rise September. But things were looking
to a six-week high of 866½p, having up for the Cheshire-based company,
gained 30½p, or 3.7 per cent, after it which makes and supplies surgical
snapped up Ireland’s Bluestone Motor dressings, after it revealed half-year
Finance, which Shore Capital analysts results a touch ahead of expectations.
believe will “presumably arrest and Analysts at Liberum, who now tip
subsequently reverse the decline in their clients to buy the stock, believe
the motor finance book in the region”. the sell-off “feels overdone”, with the
Elsewhere, Pagegroup’s shares shares due to start rerating over the
finished the day up 7¼p, or 1.8 per next few months. They closed up 6½p,
cent, at 415¾p after the recruiter or 3.7 per cent, at 186½p.
outlined its medium-term targets — Ten Lifestyle ticked all the boxes as
including £1.5 billion in shareholder the global concierge group said it
returns and operating profits of expected to report record revenues of
£400 million by the end of the decade. £63 million this year, a 35 per cent
Shares in 3i Group fell, despite rise on the year before. The shares
updating investors on the continued settled at their highest since March,
“impressive performance” from up 4¼p, or 4.3 per cent, at 103½p.
Dollar rates Exchange rates
Other Sterling
Data as shown is
for information
purposes only. No offer is made by
Morningstar or this publication
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 45

Business
The Times unit trust information service
Yld Yld Yld Yld Yld Yld
Sell Buy +/­ % Sell Buy +/­ % Sell Buy +/­ % Sell Buy +/­ % Sell Buy +/­ % Sell Buy +/­ %

British funds

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further details on a particular fund, readers
should contact their fund manager.

Data as shown is
for information
purposes only. No offer is made by Morningstar
or this publication
46 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

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the times | Thursday September 21 2023 47

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Morningstar or this publication
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
Playwright famous for
his stage hit Duet for One
Tom Kempinski
Page 50
Obituaries
Field Marshal Muthoni Kirima
Much-feared Mau Mau warrior, known as ‘Weaver Bird’, who fought for Kenyan independence but later felt betrayed by her government
As a child growing up on a pyrethrum
farm in Kenya, Muthoni Kirima was
told by her father never to forget that
she was “a slave to the white settlers”.
Home was a shack and from dawn until
dusk she and her family toiled in the
fields for a pittance, regularly witness-
ing verbal, physical and sexual abuse.
She did not forget. Some 20 years
later in 1952, Kirima was among the first
wave of Kenyans to take the solemn
oath of allegiance to the newly formed
Kenya Land and Freedom Army (better
known as the Mau Mau), whose modus
operandi was to attack white settlers’
farms under cover of night and
terrorise them into returning to their
home country.
Operating in the remote forests near
Mount Kenya, where she lived in daily
fear of being savaged by wild animals or
blown to pieces by bombs dropped by
the RAF aircraft, Kirima quickly
proved herself to be the most resource-
ful and resilient of freedom fighters.
Dedan Kimathi, one of the principal
leaders of the Mau Mau’s forest army,
came to rely on her counsel and called
her “Weaver Bird” because of the cun-
ning way she would build and interlock
When Kenya won its
independence, she stayed
in the forest, suspicious
strategies like a nest. Huddled around a
fire at night as mist descended on the
forest and its beasts howled, her fellow
freedom fighters hung on her words.
Kirima, who was as flinty as her
piercing stare, was courageous in battle
and brilliant at finding ways to co-ordi-
nate the disparate Mau Mau units in the
forests of Mount Kenya and Aberdare.
Kimathi repeatedly promoted Kirima
until she became the first, and only,
woman to be appointed field marshal of
the freedom army.
The British responded to the insur-
gency by appointing General George
Erskine, general officer commanding-
in-chief of East Africa Command, with
six battalions of British troops and
more than 3,000 native Kenyan sol-
diers at his disposal. Aided by a network
of spies, he sent soldiers to the forest to
find the Mau Mau and cut off supply
lines of arms and ammunition from
Nairobi. Kimathi was finally captured
in 1956, by which point the colonial
power had largely subdued the rebel-
lion. By 1960 Kenyan majority rule was
established as the country transitioned
towards independence.
Many of lesser heart and courage
than Kirima had long since left the for-
ests and given themselves up to the
British. Some would be forced into giv-
ing the colonial power information on
where to find their former Mau Mau
comrades. Weaver Bird proved elusive
to the end, and only gave up the strug-
gle in 1963 when she was certain that
the British had been defeated — at
which point some 10,000 Mau Mau
fighters had been killed and more than
1,000 hanged (although some esti-
mates put the figure of Mau Mau fatali-
ties at about 20,000).
Kirima soon felt betrayed. The Mau
Mau and other resistance movements
had fomented after 1945 partly because
Field Marshal Muthoni Kirima in 1963, when Kenya gained independence: she had to be coaxed out of the forest to meet
the new prime minister; top right, until this year she kept the dreadlocks grown during the struggle; above, Kirima in 2023
of a deep sense of injustice felt by re-
turning Kenyan soldiers who had
served in the British army with distinc-
tion during the Second World War and
were promised land. Yet prime arable
land continued to be handed out to
white settlers, while returning soldiers
were given little.
After independence Kirima was
among the Mau Mau veterans who ex-
pected to be rewarded. “I emerged from
the forest but was never given even an
inch of land. I have nothing to show for
those 11 years, not even a needle,” she
lamented. For the rest of her life she
campaigned for greater recognition of
Mau Mau veterans.
Muthoni Kirima was born in 1931, the
fourth of ten children to Kikuyu
parents who worked on a farm near the
village of Nairutia, Nyeri County, in
Kenya’s Central Province, amid some of
the most fertile land in the world.
The farm was one of many built by
white settlers since the British had de-
clared Kenya a protectorate in 1895.
The indigenous population began to be
displaced after the first white settlers
started arriving in 1902. The territory
was declared a British colony in 1920.
Promised land reform yielded little
for the native population and resent-
ment began to burn. Among Muthoni’s
earliest memories were watching her
father engage in small acts of resistance
on the farm, such as stealing milk when
the bwana (overseer) was not looking
and sharing it with the other workers.
Muthoni was married at 16 to Mu-
tungi Gichuhi, a cook working at the
same farm. They settled in Nyeri,
where she sold goods on the street. Kiri-
ma persuaded her husband to take the
She slept in trees to
avoid being mauled or
trampled by wild beasts
Mau Mau oath in 1953 and watched
with pride as he left for the Aberdare
forest to fight. She remained in Nyeri,
passing on vital information to the Mau
Mau about the movements of the
Kikuyu Home Guard (a paramilitary
force of Kikuyu tribesmen loyal to the
British that was set up in 1953). When
the home guard found out that her
husband had joined the Mau Mau,
Kirima was nearly beaten to death.
“They left me for dead, but some
Register
women found me and took me to a safe
place,” she recalled.
After she recovered and returned to
her home, all her livestock had been
stolen. She fled to the forest herself in
1953 and after two weeks found a Mau
Mau unit. Kirima quickly proved her
prowess at finding food, treating
wounds and impressed her comrades
with the accuracy of her shooting.
“We would raid European settlers’
farms for cattle, goats and sheep. We
once launched a raid from Rugoti bush
camp into Kariminio farm, which was
guarded by colonial soldiers. We had a
heavy battle in which we killed one
white soldier and two African scouts.”
On another occasion she was shot in
the hand, and the bullet remained
lodged there for the rest of her life.
It later emerged that Mau Mau pris-
oners were tortured by the British in
detention camps and that some Mau
Mau units massacred innocent people,
including children. Kirima always
maintained that her unit tried not to kill
anyone and that the Mau Mau could
achieve their aims without bloodshed.
“We would take their guns and ask
them to pack and go back to their own
country,” she said. “Many did.”
49
Survival in the forest entailed hunt-
ing wild animals for bush meat and
sleeping in trees to avoid being tram-
pled by rhinos and buffalo or mauled by
wild predators. She was constantly on
the move. Fires could be put out and
covered with soil and leaves in seconds.
“We survived on herbs and roots.
Sometimes we would go for weeks
without a proper meal,” said Kirima,
one of the few Mau Mau warriors to
avoid capture and tough it out in the
forest for more than a decade.
When news reached her that Kenya
had won independence, Kirima re-
mained in the forest, suspicious. Finally
she was coaxed out, travelled to Nairobi
in the back of a rackety old Peugeot and
met the prime minister and future pres-
ident, Jomo Kenyatta.
Kirima was taken to the national sta-
dium in Nairobi with other veterans on
December 16, 1963. “We gathered at the
stadium to give up our pistols, guns,
machetes, knives, loin cloths, every-
thing. I watched the new Kenyan flag
flutter in the skies and I knew I had
accomplished my mission.”
The ensuing years were a struggle.
When she tracked down her husband,
whom she had not seen for 11 years, she
found that he had taken another wife
and barred her from the home they
used to share. He even insisted on the
return of the cows and goats he had
given her father as a dowry.
Mau Mau veterans were mistrusted
by Kenyatta and some, including Field
Marshal Baimungi Marete, were killed
by government agents after independ-
ence. With no spoils of victory forth-
coming, Kirima forced her way into the
office of the mayor of Nairobi: “I just lay
down on the mat. He rose up and asked
me what my problem was. I told him I
was not going to leave until he gave me
a place to stay.” The mayor found her a
house in Nyeri. She never remarried
nor had children after an early miscar-
riage. “Kenya is my only child,” she
once said.
By way of an award, she was given a
licence to trade ivory in 1966. The Mau
Mau had killed many elephants in the
forests of Mount Kenya for their bush
meat and to raise funds by trading
ivory: Kirima knew where many tusks
were buried. For ten years she dug them
up and sold them until Kenya banned
trade in ivory in 1976. Thereafter, she
sold fruits and cereals and eventually
saved enough money to buy a piece of
land. The Kenyan government did not
officially recognise her until 1998, when
President Daniel arap Moi awarded her
a medal for distinguished service.
Kirima was not satisfied. As a symbol
of protest at the treatment of Mau Mau
veterans, she kept the dreadlocks she
had grown during the struggle to
remind herself that she was still fighting
for a better life for herself and all
Kenyans. After 70 years the greying
braids came down to her feet. On April
2, 2023, Mama Ngina Kenyatta, the
widow of Kenya’s first president, cut
them off in a public ceremony as
Kirima acknowledged that she was
finally letting go.
Field Marshal Muthoni Kirima, Mau Mau
freedom fighter and campaigner for its
veterans, was born in 1931. She died on
September 4, 2023, aged 91 or 92
50
Register
Tom Kempinski
Playwright whose hit Duet for One, about a wheelchair-bound violinist, starred Frances de la Tour and was made into a film
When Tom Kempinski wrote Duet for
One, it would be fair to say that few
theatre directors saw the play’s potent-
ial, let alone that it would become a
hit film starring Julie Andrews and
Alan Bates. The general tenor of the
rejection notes from the theatres that
turned down the play was “Who wants
to see two people sitting down talking
for two hours?”
It turned out that an enormous num-
ber of people did, for Kempinski’s dia-
logue was gripping and cathartic, and
after the play finally received its pre-
miere at the Bush Theatre in Shep-
herd’s Bush in 1980, it was swiftly trans-
ferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre in
the West End and then to Broadway.
The plot of Kempinski’s two-hander
centred on the encounters between a
renowned concert violinist, wheel-
chair-bound and suicidal after being
struck down with multiple sclerosis,
and a German-Jewish psychiatrist
attempting to convince her that life is
still worth living, even though she can
no longer make music. Whether she
carried out her threat to take her
own life was left hanging at the end of
the play.
In the original production the violinist
was played by Frances de la Tour, at the
time Kempinski’s wife and the mother of
two of his three children, and her corus-
cating performance won her an Olivier
award for best actress. Kempinski also
earned a nomination as the writer.
It was widely assumed that the play
had been inspired by the plight of the
cellist Jacqueline du Pré, whose stellar
career was halted by MS in 1973, and
her husband, the conductor Daniel
Barenboim, but Kempinski denied it
and insisted that the work was consid-
erably more personal. A clue lay in the
play’s title, for it was, in effect, an argu-
ment the playwright was having with
his own tormented self. “Rage, ideas of
sexual perversion, ideas of torturing
people, ideas that I had to suppress or
paralyse,” he said. “That’s the woman
paralysed in the play.”
When the director Andrei Koncha-
lovsky turned Duet for One into a film six
years later, Kempinski wrote the screen-
play. In the film, the violinist’s star pupil
deserts, as does her husband, who runs
off with his secretary. She gives away her
Franco Migliacci
Italian lyricist who co-wrote Volare, one of the bestselling songs of all time which was famously covered by Dean Martin
If Jerusalem is perhaps England’s alter-
native national anthem, then that
status in Italy is occupied by the ballad
Nel blu, dipinto di blu, more popularly
known as Volare. One of the best-
selling songs of all time, and frequently
heard on the soundtrack to films set in
the Bel Paese, it was sung by Domenico
Modugno and written by him with
Franco Migliacci.
Recollections varied as to the origin
of its lyrics, familiar to all Italians but
whose meaning — “In the blue, painted
blue” — at first blush appears obscure.
Migliacci’s version, which had the ring
of truth, was that one day in 1957, when
he was already in low spirits, he woke up
with a hangover after an unusually viv-
id dream. With a vision in his head of
two paintings by Marc Chagall, The Red
Rooster and The Artist and His Model,
which depict a man flying and one with
his face painted blue, the song’s title
came to him.
He and Modugno, who had known
each other since meeting on a film set
five years before, worked for several
months on the somewhat surreal
words. They tell of someone soaring off
into the blue yonder, a feeling recap-
Frances de la Tour, then Kempinski’s wife, alongside David de Keyser in the gripping and
cathartic Duet for One at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, 1980; right, Kempinski in 2016
instruments and musical scores to a
Steptoe-like rag-and-bone man who she
also asks to share her bed. Then, watch-
ing a film of one of her old concerts, she
is driven to such despair that she takes an
overdose before her maid breaks into
the room to try to save her.
Kempinski did not much like the
screenplay he had written and com-
plained that they had made him “turn it
into a sort of Dallas”, but the film won a
Golden Globe nomination for Andrews
and earned its writer £250,000. Having
separated from de la Tour, he used the
cash to buy a new house.
He followed this with Separation,
another smart two-hander which was
even more autobiographical than Duet
for One and featured a lonely, over-
weight agoraphobic playwright with
writer’s block: he falls in love with a
young American actress with a neuro-
logical disease that has left her unable to
walk without crutches. “Apart from the
bit where they fall in love, everything
tured, when the dream ends, by looking
into their lover’s eyes which are of the
same hue. Arguably, the song encapsu-
lates two key facets of Italy, its beauty
— the warm southern sky — and its
people’s desire for individual liberty.
It was Modugno who added the song’s
distinctive refrain — “Volare, oh, oh!” —
and the gentle swing of its music. In 1958
it stormed to victory at Sanremo, Italy’s
domestic song contest, aided by Modu-
gno’s expressive performance in which,
contrary to classical technique, he
spread his arms wide as he sang.
That acknowledgment of American
influence marked a de-
cisive break with the
native tradition em-
bodied by Caruso and
others, symbolising
perhaps the moment
at which Italy, and
not merely Italian
popular music, en-
tered the modern age.
The song only came
third in the Eurovision com-
Migliacci said he thought of
the title after a vivid dream
else is completely true,” the playwright
remarked. Separation received its pre-
miere at the Hampstead Theatre in
1987 with a heavily padded David Su-
chet as the writer and Saskia Reeves as
the actress. Michael Attenborough’s
production transferred to the West End
for a run at the Comedy Theatre (now
renamed the Harold Pinter).
Kempinski next came up with the
farce Sex Please, We’re Italian. Its crea-
tion, he said, had given him “a great deal
of pleasure after years of introspective
writing”. However, when the play
opened at the Young Vic in 1991, The
New York Times called it “one of the
most spectacularly unfunny evenings
the London theatre has seen in decades”
and its star, Helen Mirren, was left
“traumatised” by the first night.
Despite his bouts of writer’s block, in
total he wrote 40 plays but only the first
two enjoyed success. He also overcame
his weight problems and lost 12 stone but
continued to battle with agoraphobia.
petition held that year in the Nether-
lands. That summer, however, it became
the second song to top the newly created
Billboard Hot 100 chart in America,
transcending the language barrier to sell
two million copies there. Dean Martin’s
contemporary cover version, Volare,
sold another 1.5 million records. It
reached No 10 in the UK.
Numerous other versions have fol-
lowed, from artists including Gracie
Fields, Barry White and the Gipsy
Kings. It has also featured in films such
as The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) and the
TV show Family Guy. In 2004 SIAE, the
Italian copyright agency, of which Mig-
liacci was then president, certified it as
the most-played Italian song in history.
Francesco Migliacci was born in
1930 in Mantua. His father worked for
Italy’s tax police, and when Franco
was four the family moved to Flor-
ence, where he grew up. His parents
made him study accounting but he
had already discovered his
artistic bent.
At the start of the 1950s, he
won a competition for
young actors that gained
him a minor role in a film
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
“You are
afraid you
are going to go
berserk and
murder everyone out-
side, so you imprison yourself,” he said.
Thomas Michael John Kempinski
was born in Hendon, north London, in
1938, the son of Melanie (née Rahmer)
and Gerhard Kempinski. His parents
were German-Jewish hoteliers who had
fled Berlin for London two years earlier
and opened a restaurant bearing the
family name in Heddon Street, just off
Regent Street.
When the Second World War broke
out he was sent to America with his
father’s parents, but his grandfather
died six months later. His grandmother
was unable to cope and he was fostered
by a Jewish family in New York before
he was sent back to Britain. Two years
later his father died and he had the
first of several nervous breakdowns.
His mother sent him to board at
being shot at Cinecitta studios in Rome.
He settled in the capital and, during its
golden age of cinema, appeared over the
next decade in bit parts in two dozen
films. He worked for directors such as
Dino Risi, Pietro Germi and Luigi Zam-
pa, and alongside the likes of Alberto
Sordi, the comic actor, in L’arte di arran-
giarsi (1954) and Ladro lui, ladra lei
(1958). He later did dubbing work.
Migliacci also worked for a time as an
illustrator, notably for a children’s
magazine, Il Pioniere. It was affiliated
to both the Scout movement and the
Italian Communist Party and first edit-
ed by Gianni Rodari, Italy’s best-known
postwar writer for children.
After their initial success, Modugno
and Migliacci collaborated for some
years, with the latter writing the lyrics
to hit tunes such as Farfalle and Io. The
second of these was covered by Elvis
Presley as Ask Me (1964).
Yet Migliacci came to chafe at the re-
strictive nature of their partnership,
and in the early Sixties their friendship
fractured when he went off to write for
other Italian artists. He was to be par-
ticularly associated with Gianni Mo-
randi: it was Migliacci who supplied his
Abingdon and he went up to Gonville
& Caius College, Cambridge, to read
modern languages, but he suffered
another breakdown and underwent
psychiatric treatment in the Maudsley
Hospital, south London. He did not
return to Cambridge but instead
trained at Rada and went on to a
successful stage career, appearing in
Blitz!, Lionel Bart’s follow-up to Oliver!,
and in 1963 joining Laurence Olivier’s
newly formed National Theatre, where
he took on supporting parts.
The highlight of his stage career
came with the title role in Charles
Wood’s 1967 anti-war play Dingo at the
Royal Court after the National had
been forced to drop the play due to
censorship problems with the lord
chamberlain’s office. According to the
veteran theatre critic Michael Coveney,
the success of the play — staged at the
Court under club conditions — was
a factor in the abolition of theatre
censorship the following year.
On television Kempinski
appeared in Z-Cars and Dixon
of Dock Green, and on the big
screen he drew on personal
experience to play Albert
Finney’s psychiatrist in Gum-
shoe (1971), Stephen Frears’s
directorial debut.
He is survived by his children
Josh and Tamasin from his ten-
year relationship with de la Tour,
and by his second wife, Sarah Tingay,
an entertainment lawyer, and their
daughter, Antonia. His first marriage
between 1967 and 1972 to Margaret
Nolan, who played a masseuse in the
Bond film Goldfinger, ended in divorce.
He was a man of the radical left who
was active in the actors’ union Equity.
In the spring of 1968 he joined Peter
Brook’s famous theatre workshop in
Paris but quit to join the student revolu-
tionaries on the streets. In 1973, with de
la Tour, he was one of the co-founders
of the Workers Revolutionary Party, a
Trotskyist group. Although he subse-
quently denounced the party, he re-
mained committed to the cause of a
workers’ revolution.
Tom Kempinski, playwright, was born on
March 24, 1938. He died of undisclosed
causes on August 2, 2023, aged 85
breakthrough, Andavo a cento all’ora
(1962), and many of the hits which
cemented Morandi’s standing as Italy’s
darling of the decade. Among these
were the Vietnam protest song C’era un
ragazzo come me (1966), arranged by
Ennio Morricone and to which Mig-
liacci wrote the Italian lyrics. The song
was covered by Joan Baez and per-
formed by her at the Isle of Wight festi-
val in 1970.
Morandi would go on to sell an esti-
mated 50 million records, although he
endured a prolonged slump until he
was rescued by another song written
for him by Migliacci, Uno su mille (1985).
By his wife Gloria Wall, who survives
him with their children, Migliacci had
two sons and a daughter. Laura is an
author and former TV personality, while
Francesco is married to the sister of the
wife of Mogol, the only rival to Migliac-
ci’s fame in Italy as a pop lyricist. For all
his success, however, no song of Mogol’s
is likely ever to take the place in the Ital-
ian psyche of Migliacci’s masterpiece.
Franco Migliacci, songwriter, was born
on October 28, 1930. He died on
September 15, 2023, aged 92
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
Court Circular
Hôtel de Charost, Rue du
Faubourg Saint-Honoré,
Paris
20th September, 2023
The King and Queen left
Farnborough Airport,
Hampshire, this morning for
the State Visit to France.
Their Majesties were
received at the Airport by the
Lord Parker of Minsmere
(Lord Chamberlain) and His
Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of
Hampshire (Mr Nigel
Atkinson).
The King and Queen this
afternoon arrived at
Paris-Orly Airport and were
received by His Majesty’s
Ambassador to the French
Republic (Her Excellency
Dame Menna Rawlings), the
Ambassador from the French
Republic to the Court of St
James’s (Mrs Hélène Duchêne)
and the Prime Minister of
the French Republic
‘He’ll be shouting for Ireland in the rugby but
England in the cricket’
CILLIAN FRANCIS DUNKLEY WAS BORN ON DECEMBER 19, 2022, AT PETERBOROUGH CITY
HOSPITAL IN CAMBRIDGESHIRE TO KATE WALSH AND JAMIE DUNKLEY
Celebrate the arrival of a newborn in Readers’ Lives, a service in contracted tributes
Call 020 7782 5583 or email
readerslives@thetimes.co.uk
(Madame Élisabeth Borne).
The King and Queen drove
to the Arc de Triomphe and
were received by The
President of the French
Republic and Madame
Macron.
His Majesty was received
with a Royal Salute and
inspected the Guard of
Honour.
The King and The President
of the French Republic laid a
wreath at the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier and
rekindled the Eternal Flame,
and subsequently signed the
Livre d’Or.
His Majesty and The
President, with Her Majesty
and Madame Macron,
afterwards drove in a
ceremonial procession to the
Élysée Palace, accompanied by
a mounted escort of the
Republican Guard.
The King, accompanied by
The President of the French
Republic, later walked to the
Residence of His Majesty’s
Ambassador, where The King
and The President planted a
tree gifted by The President.
The King and Queen were
entertained this evening at a
State Banquet given by The
President of the French
The perfect gift
for new parents
Republic and Madame Macron
at the Palace of Versailles.
The following are in
attendance: the Rt Hon James
Cleverly MP (Secretary of
State for Foreign,
Commonwealth and
Development Affairs), the Rt
Hon Sir Clive Alderton, Mr
Christopher Fitzgerald, Ms Eva
Omaghomi, Mr Tobyn
Andreae, Ms Laura Sullivan,
Dr Douglas Glass, Lieutenant
Colonel Jonathan Thompson
and Mrs Sophia Densham.
Kensington Palace
20th September, 2023
The Prince of Wales this
morning arrived at Heathrow
Airport, London, from the
United States of America.
Mr Jean-Christophe Gray,
Mr Lee Thompson, Mr David
Hunt and Mr Louis Reynolds
were in attendance.
The Princess of Wales, Joint
Patron, the Royal Foundation
of The Prince and Princess of
Wales, this morning held a
Meeting at Windsor Castle.
St James’s Palace
20th September, 2023
The Duchess of Edinburgh this
morning attended a
Lieutenancy Charity Meeting
at Coldharbour Mill, Uffculme,
Cullompton, and was received
by His Majesty’s Lord-
Lieutenant of Devon (Mr
David Fursdon).
St James’s Palace
20th September, 2023
The Princess Royal, Patron,
Police Treatment Centres, this
morning visited the St
Andrews Centre, Harlow Moor
Road, Harrogate, and was
received by His Majesty’s
Lord-Lieutenant of North
Yorkshire (Mrs Johanna
Ropner).
Her Royal Highness later
visited Claro Enterprises
Community Workshop, Spa
Road, Harrogate, to mark its
Thirtieth Anniversary.
The Princess Royal this
afternoon visited Woods of
Harrogate Limited Fine Linens
Company, Prince Albert Row,
65-69 Station Parade,
Harrogate.
Her Royal Highness later
visited Hollybank Trust Care
Centre, Far Common Road,
Mirfield, to mark its Seventieth
Anniversary, and was received
by Mrs Helen Thompson (Vice
Lord-Lieutenant of West
Yorkshire).
50%
discount for
subscribers
Births, Marriages and Deaths
BUT NOT all have accepted the Good
News. Isaiah himself said, “Lord, who
believed our message?” So then, faith
comes from hearing the message, and the
message comes through preaching Christ.
Romans 10.16–17 (GNB)
Bible verses are provided by the
Bible Society
Births
EDEN on 14th September 2023 to Helen
(née Shepheard-Walwyn) and John, a son,
Francis John Robert.
GARE on 8th September 2023 to Olivia
and Thomas, a son, Maximilian Vincent
Cusworth, brother to Hector.
Forthcoming Marriages
MR W. S. R. WHEATLEY
AND DR A. I. BROEKHUIZEN
The engagement is announced between
William, son of Mr and Mrs Wheatley of
Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, and Amber,
daughter of Mr and Dr Broekhuizen of
Hampton, London.
Deaths
BISHOP Patricia M, peacefully passed
away at home on Sunday 10th September
2023. Mother of Tim and Sarah and a
beloved grandmother. She will be sadly
missed by all her family, loved ones and
friends. The funeral service will be held at
Weston Mill Crematorium, Plymouth, on
13th October at 12.15pm. No flowers by
request, donations if desired for St Luke’s
Hospice may be left online at wcpltd.com
All inquiries to Walter C. Parson, St Judes,
PL4 8PJ, tel: 01752 665438.
EVERS Penelope Anne Mansell (née
Green) died on 14th September 2023, aged
79. Darling wife of the late Chris, mother of
Toby and Sophie, mother-in-law of Becca,
and Granny P to Ivy and Rose. Funeral 1pm
on 18th October at Seven Hills
Crematorium, Ipswich, and afterwards at
the Harbour Room, Levington Marina.
Donations in lieu of flowers to the Blossom
Appeal, Ipswich Hospital.
HICKS Peter Charles on 6th September
2023, aged 97. Beloved husband to Wendy,
loving father, grandpa and great-grandpa.
A thanksgiving service will be held at St
Peter’s Church, High Cross, Froxfield GU32
1EQ on Tuesday 3rd October at 11.30am.
Family flowers only. Donations, if desired,
to the Alzheimer’s Society (cheques made
payable to the charity, please) c/o Michael
Miller and Partners, 27a High Street,
Petersfield GU32 3JR or via
www.michaelmiller.co.uk donations page.
MARTIN Susanna (née Cooke) on 14th
September 2023, aged 73. Beloved wife of
John, sister of Gordon and Christopher,
loving aunt of Charles, Theo, John and
Timothy. Inquiries to Bracher Bros,
Gillingham, Dorset. Family flowers only.
Donations to Julia’s House, children’s
hospice.
ORME Edmund Hugh Macaulay, aged 90,
dearly beloved husband, father,
grandfather and great-grandfather,
died very peacefully on 13th September
2023. RIP.
LEGAL, PUBLIC, COMPANY &
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51
Register
020 7782 7553
newsukadvertising.co.uk
SHAH
Jennifer (née White) (born 1943) died
surrounded by her family at home in
Wiltshire, after a long chronic and
painful illness on 20th August 2023.
Married to ex-newspaper owner and
writer Eddy Shah for nearly 56 years,
she was a young aspiring, successful
model and actress with credits in
Carry on Doctor, the original Bond
Casino Royale (her picture is on the
DVD cover with David Niven and
Ursula Andress), Night Train to Paris,
Assignment K and If it’s Tuesday, This
Must Be Belgium with Suzanne
Pleshette and Ian McShane. She did a
number of TV shows for Granada TV’s
famous Drama Years, including the
big series The Caesars (as Caligula’s
sister). She met Eddy, who was a
studio manager, married him and left
the showbiz world two years later to
have children and set up home in
south Manchester. Shah was made
redundant three years later, and the
couple decided to sell their home and
start a newspaper. She was very
involved in its early days (as well as
having three children, Martyn,
Tamsyn and Alex) and it ended up as
the biggest privately owned and run
provincial newspaper group. Then
Jennifer got cervical cancer, at the
same time as the trade unions
attacked Shah’s printing works. She
totally supported her husband
through her illness where Christie’s
Cancer Hospital saved her life. Shah
sold the business in 1988 and, apart
from investing in leisure businesses,
he spent time looking after his wife.
She was told three times that she
wouldn’t last more than two months.
The couple dropped out, living on
their own, finding ways and investing
in medical treatments for her
recurring and spreading illnesses. She
became wheelchair and bed-bound as
she fiercely fought for her life, in
between hospital and home
treatment, for the next eight years.
Her family was with her when she
passed away in her home. She is to be
buried this week at St Peter’s Church
in Langley Burrell, Wiltshire, where
they have lived for 20 years.
THOMPSON Geraldine Douglas (née
Moule) died suddenly on 14th September
2023 in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, beloved
wife of Brigadier Tim Thompson, mother of
Harriet, Hugh and Charlotte, grandma of
Tom, Jemima, Charles, Sam, Alfie and Issie.
Thanksgiving service on Saturday 21st
October at 2.30pm at Holy Trinity Church
Chrishall SG8 8QU.
TONKS Rachel died peacefully on 10th
August 2023, aged 76. A memorial service
will be held at St Michael the Archangel
Church, Chagford, Devon, on Monday 16th
October at 2.30pm.
WAINWRIGHT Peter on 1st September
2023, aged 65, died peacefully in
Portsmouth. Dearly loved and deeply
missed. Funeral on 5th October. Details
from South Downs Funeral Services, tel:
023 9223 1567. Please wear coloured
clothing. No flowers. Donations to SSAFA,
0800 260 6767.
In Memoriam - Private
BOND MARGARET Twenty-four years
ago today. Remembered with love always.
Emma, Charles and Robert.
Politics with no boring bits
Listen to Matt Chorley on
Times Radio, Monday to
Friday at 10am
52
Law
‘Filming in
court boosts
open justice’
Top judge praises success amid calls to expand
use of cameras in trials. Catherine Baksi reports
Broadcasting sentencing remarks and
other appeal court proceedings has
been so successful in the eyes of the
departing lord chief justice that he has
said, “There is a strong argument that
we need to go further.”
In one of his final speeches before
retiring at the end of this month, Lord
Burnett of Maldon said that the broad-
casting of crown court sentencing re-
marks, which began in July last year,
has been “successful beyond our expec-
tations”.
Speaking at the annual conference of
the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and
Judges’ Association, the country’s most
senior judge predicted that broadcast-
ing of sentencing remarks “will inevita-
bly be opened up” to cover a wider
range of cases.
He suggested that future broadcast-
ing was likely to include judicial review
challenges of government decisions
that were heard in the High Court
where there was intense public interest.
While Burnett said that he was unper-
suaded that broadcasting oral evidence
of witnesses was desirable, he acknowl-
edged that there was a “serious debate
ahead about other parts of some crimi-
nal trials”.
More broadly, Burnett gave a
thumbs-up to open proceedings and
the notion that justice should be seen to
be done. He acknowledged the role
played by the media in increasing the
public’s awareness of what happened in
courts. He said that judges also had a
role to play by ensuring that their judg-
ments were written in “clear, accessible
Prosecution chief to face funding and rape case crisis
Jonathan Ames
Now is the time for Stephen Parkinson
to enjoy being the first practising solici-
tor for nearly 80 years to be appointed
as the country’s top prosecutor. Once
he starts as director of public prosecu-
tions (DPP) and head of the Crown
Prosecution Service (CPS), the joy will
quickly dissipate in what is one of the
legal profession’s most difficult jobs.
The 66-year-old former senior part-
ner of Kingsley Napley will step into a
role that is equal measure nuts-and-
bolts prosecution work and political
tightrope walking.
Parkinson has already set himself a
significant political hurdle. This year, in
an interview with The Times as he
stood down from the top slot at his firm,
Parkinson described one of his recent
predecessors as having been little more
than “average” in the role. That might
normally be seen as a refreshing dose of
language and kept as short as reasona-
bly practicable”.
Burnett’s support for using techno-
logy and the media to open the doors of
the courts comes as Ministry of Justice
officials wade through responses sub-
mitted to a government consultation
on open justice that closed at the begin-
ning of the month. Officials tell The
Times that the ministry received more
than a hundred individual submissions,
which will be considered before the
government publishes its response
early next year.
Broadcasters lobbied hard to be able
to film some sentencing. In a joint re-
sponse to the consultation, the BBC,
Sky News, ITN and the Press Associa-
tion, who carry out the filming in the
crown courts and Court of Appeal, sug-
gest broadcasting has been a “landmark
positive change for public knowledge of
the legal system” and the rule of law.
They argue that the experience of
broadcasting courts shows that the
media can be trusted to act responsibly
and that fears of disruption or grand-
standing lawyers and judges are un-
founded. They say that filming in the
crown court “has been a significant sea-
change for openness and open justice”
resulting in greater prominence of the
justice system in the public sphere and
boosting court reporting.
Accepting that “not every aspect of
every trial could be filmed”, they want
to see a move away from the default
position of not broadcasting proceed-
ings to give “real effect to the public’s
right to see justice being done and open
candour — if Parkinson were not refer-
ring to the former DPP that many
anticipate will become prime minister
within the next 18 months, Sir Keir
Starmer KC. However irked the Labour
leader might be with that comment,
Parkinson — who will take over from
Max Hill KC after he steps down next
month — has been widely welcomed by
senior legal profession figures in En-
gland and Wales. And they have
already compiled a “to do” list.
Another of his recent predecessors
— Alison Saunders, who spent five
fraught years as DPP until 2018 — says
that it will be all about the money.
“More is needed to invest in the justice
system so that the public gets the
system it deserves but which no one
sees the need to invest in,” Saunders
says. She says that the CPS’s handling of
rape and serious sexual assault allega-
tions will continue to loom large on
Parkinson’s radar as they did for Hill.
Mr Justice Goss gave a whole-life order to Lucy Letby, the serial child killer and former nurse, at Manchester crown court
justice”. As well as expanding the
broadcasting of crown court sentences,
they suggest that the media should also
be able to film victim impact state-
ments, the defendant entering court,
opening and closing speeches by law-
yers, prosecution and defence senten-
cing submissions and the judge’s direc-
tions to the jury. Their response also
‘The broadcasting of
sentencing remarks will
inevitably be opened up’
suggests that the public should be able
to see High Court proceedings, extradi-
tion hearings, courts martial, magis-
trates’ sentencing, coroners’ inquests,
tribunal decisions and youth, family
and court of protection cases.
Acknowledging the positive impact
on open justice made by broadcasting
and remote hearings, in its response the
Bar Council — the professional body
for barristers in England and Wales —
voices concerns over transparency in
some cases. It highlights concerns
She points out that the new DPP is like-
ly to come into conflict with chief police
officers — not least the commissioner
of the Met in London — who are lobby-
ing to take back charging decisions in
those cases.
Saunders opposes those calls, and
says that Parkinson “will have to make
that case and build relations with the
police service to improve performance
together”.
One area where Parkinson will be
able to lead with confidence is in the
prosecution of economic crime. Lord
Garnier KC, a former Conservative
solicitor-general, says that he should
waste no time in pressing the govern-
ment to agree to the addition of “failure
to prevent money laundering” and to
the deletion of the small and medium-
sized enterprise exemption to the new
“failure to prevent fraud” offences in
the Economic Crime and Corporate
Transparency Bill. That proposed
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
around the single justice procedure, a
process that is designed to deal swiftly
with low-level, non-imprisonable of-
fences, where a single magistrate deals
with cases behind closed doors, without
press attendance.
The Magistrates’ Association, which
represents those dealing with that pro-
cedure, echoes the Bar’s concerns over
the “opacity” of the process. “Any oper-
ational benefit or efficiency improve-
ment provided by such processes must
be looked at through the prism of the
impact on open justice, which must al-
ways be of paramount concern,” the
association says.
The body suggests that defendants
do not sufficiently understand the pro-
cess and as a result they either do not
seek legal advice or fail to respond to
prosecution notices, which are sent by
post. “As the system may appear to be
administrative rather than judicial,
people may not realise the importance
of responding and thus risk ending up
with a criminal conviction without en-
tering a plea,” the association says. As
well as doing more to inform defend-
ants, officials stress that it is “vital” to
legislation is set to return to the House
of Commons next month after it was
amended in the Lords last week.
Parkinson will be the first solicitor to
lead the CPS; the only other solicitor
DPP was Sir Theobald Mathew, who
was appointed in 1944, more than 40
years before the service’s creation.
Mathew was called to the Bar before
transferring to the solicitors’ profes-
sion. He spent 20 years as DPP, the
longest stint in the role.
If senior barristers resent the return
of a solicitor to the post, they are not
showing it. Nick Vineall KC, the chair-
man of the Bar Council, called on Par-
kinson to note concerns that “the crim-
inal Bar has contracted over recent
years at a time when demand has in-
creased” — and the impact that short-
age is having on prosecutions. Vineall
added that Parkinson should examine
why the CPS struggles to find advo-
cates willing to prosecute rape and
make the processes accessible to re-
porters, with the introduction of a
system to allow the press and public to
join sessions on request. The associa-
tion calls for a “push to conduct single
justice sessions in court, rather than at
home” and for the results and out-
comes “to be published afterwards on a
reliable basis”. As things stand, the asso-
ciation says that the listing of cases does
not provide sufficient transparency of
the process” and “because the process
cannot be observed, justice cannot be
seen to be done”.
The Bar Council raises concerns over
the online plea and allocation system,
which is scheduled to be introduced in
magistrates’ court proceedings to en-
able pleas to be entered online rather
than in open court. The council warns
that the change will mean that some of-
fences will have no public hearing.
Other groups, including the Law
Society and the campaigning organisa-
tion Justice, highlight the importance
of improving court listings to enable the
press and public to see the cases that are
taking place, and the need for better da-
ta collection through the justice system.
serious sexual offence cases. He called
on Parkinson to consider carefully the
use of section 28 hearings in which wit-
nesses in those cases have their evi-
dence prerecorded. Vineall says that
there is a danger that “their overuse in
cases involving adult complainants
leads to lower conviction rates”.
At the grassroots of the criminal
courts, Tana Adkin KC, the chair-
woman of the Criminal Bar Associa-
tion, also focused on rape prosecutions,
saying that there needs to be parity of
fees paid to advocates instructed by the
CPS and defence barristers paid from
the legal aid fund.
Times Law
Editor Jonathan Ames
020 7782 5405 jonathan.ames@thetimes.co.uk
Advertising and marketing
For print and online: Jeanine Kiala
020 7782 7518 jeanine.kiala@news.co.uk
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
Rugby lawyers tackle game safety
Dan Hayes
When Tom Curry became the first
player to be shown a red card at this
year’s Rugby World Cup, England fans
may have felt a sense of déjà vu. With
their team’s preparation marred by the
sending off of Owen Farrell and Billy
Vunipola in warm-up games last
month, an early departure in the team’s
opening fixture had a feeling of predict-
ability.
While in real time it was easy to miss
the offence, Curry’s brow-splitting high
challenge on the Argentina full back
Juan Cruz Mallía was duly sanctioned
under rugby’s law 9.13, which covers
dangerous tackles. England did not
contest the sending-off and the player
was last week handed a two-game ban.
Regardless of whether England or
any of the other home nations battle to
the final stages of the tournament, the
UK will at least have representation
among World Rugby’s disciplinary
team for the duration. Charged with
overseeing the competition’s rules and
regulations, including sendings-off,
this group includes lawyers such as
Christopher Quinlan KC, chairman of
the judicial panel, and Lord Justice
Dingemans, a Court of Appeal judge
and longstanding rugby administrator,
who on this occasion is one of the judi-
cial committee chairmen.
The lawyers are working alongside
coaches, referees and retired players
such as Becky Essex, a former Red Ro-
ses forward and Women’s Rugby World
Cup winner, and the one-time Leicester
Tigers and England wing Leon Lloyd.
According to Sir Bill Beaumont, the
chairman of World Rugby, the combi-
nation of legal expertise and sporting
experience aims to provide the “consist-
ent decision-making” required when
incidents occur.
“Player welfare is our top priority,”
Beaumont says. “It can be a complex
area, particularly on field, but this is a
very talented, motivated and aligned
group who are on the side of rugby.”
The World Cup’s quest to combine
player safety and disciplinary clarity
may also have a wider knock-on across
grassroots rugby, coinciding as it does
with a decision this season to lower the
height of tackles in the community
game.
While this move was not necessarily
welcomed with open arms by all
administrators at local level, it is hard
to dispute the thinking behind it.
Lawyer of the week Rachel Harger
Rachel Harger, a solicitor at the
London law firm Bindmans, acted
for Patsy Stevenson and Dania al-
Obeid in successful civil claims
arising from their arrests and forceful
removal from a vigil for Sarah
Everard, who was raped and killed
by the Metropolitan Police officer
Wayne Couzens in 2021.
What were the biggest hurdles
you had to overcome in this case?
As highlighted in Baroness Casey of
Blackstock’s review, the Metropolitan
Police’s “characteristic defensiveness,
internal focus and lack of humility”
in response to any criticism of the
policing of the vigil.
What is the best decision you have
taken as a lawyer? Building and
Tom Curry’s challenge on Juan Cruz Mallía in the match between England and Argentina at this year’s Rugby World Cup
“Concussion is the most common
match injury,” says Richard Whittam
KC, the independent head of judiciary
for the Rugby Football Union (RFU).
“We need to reduce the risks of head
injury as much as possible. The lower-
ing of the tackle height in England — in
line with the other home unions —
means tacklers will need to aim below
the base of the sternum and target the
belly and the thigh area.”
With referees charged with over-
seeing the change “sympathetically”,
Whittam does not expect the rule
changes to bring a sudden rash of disci-
plinary hearings to the nation’s lower
leagues. “Tackles that contact the neck
and head will be assessed under the
head contact protocol and may well
result in a red or yellow card,” he says.
“Tackles above the base of the sternum,
but below the neck and head, will lead
to a penalty and potentially a yellow
card. If a player receives two yellow
cards for such tackles in a match it will
result in an automatic red, although ini-
tially these red cards will be treated as
technical offences and not acts of foul
play — so like being offside.”
Whittam adds that the aim is for the
community game “to embrace the
change . . . It is important that any disci-
pline process that deals with the change
is transparent and understood. Yellow
maintaining a caseload that reflects a
commitment to social justice.
Who do you most admire
in the law? Lawyers
who work tirelessly to
keep legal aid
centres and drop-
ins available to
local communities.
What is the best
advice you have
received? You have
two ears, one mouth
— listen twice as much as
you speak.
What is the funniest thing that has
happened in your job? During
cards can have a huge impact on a com-
munity side that may not have the same
fitness levels as professional players
and so find it even more difficult to play
for ten minutes without the offending
player.”
These tackle-height innovations
come at a time when World Rugby, the
RFU and the Welsh Rugby Union are
facing legal action from hundreds of
former players, both amateur and pro-
fessional, over head injuries incurred
while playing the game.
Richard Boardman, a partner at the
law firm Rylands Garth, is representing
more than 450 former players facing
neurological impairments, including
motor neurone disease, dementia, epi-
lepsy and Parkinson’s disease. “Concus-
sions are clearly an issue, and there are
research papers that suggest if a player
suffers even three concussions they
should retire,” Garth says. “The bigger
issue is the accumulation of subcon-
cussive blows to the head.”
Boardman suggests that rugby could
follow the National Football League in
the US, where there are fewer fix-
tures. “Over there the season lasts for
around four to five months, during
which time teams play 17 games. Com-
pare that with top rugby players, who
could be taking part in 30 competitive
games, and unregulated contact train-
lockdown I was invited to my first,
and last, Instagram live with a local
activist group to give a know-
your-rights workshop. I
prepared handwritten
slides, which I thought
would help us
navigate the new
Covid regulations in
a fun and engaging
way. No one told
me that my mike
wasn’t working, my
seat slowly dropped
throughout so that
only my forehead
became visible on screen
and thanks to some sort of
Instagram mirror effect every sign
appeared backwards and was totally
illegible throughout.
ing, for 11 months a year. It’s not just the
big head knocks, it’s the accumulation
of impacts from rucking, tackling,
scrummaging and carrying the ball.”
Rugby is not alone in assessing the
long-term legacy of playing the game.
This week marked the launch of Head
Safe Football, a charity focused on rais-
ing awareness of chronic traumatic en-
cephalopathy, a condition that is linked
to repeatedly heading the ball in asso-
ciation football.
Fronted by the broadcaster Hayley
McQueen, whose father, Gordon, a
Scottish international, died from com-
plications of dementia this year, the
charity is highlighting the potential
risks associated with the sport. She
says: “I want my dad’s legacy to be that
of education on the dangers of heading
the ball, particularly with youngsters.”
exclusive to subscribers
Power abuse Reforms
needed to build police trust
Dog danger American XL
bully ban right thing to do
Fighting fraud Take
agency back to basics
thetimes.co.uk
What are the best and worst
elements of being a lawyer? The
ability to achieve positive change
however small — but it never really
feels enough.
What law would you enact?
Enforcing reparations for the
transatlantic slave trade — imposing
duties to offer reparations on all who
benefited, including the royal family,
banks, churches and colleges.
What is your favourite book?
Most recently, Trauma Stewardship:
An Everyday Guide to Caring for
Self While Caring for Others by
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky.
Linda Tsang
l_tsang@hotmail.com
53
Headline
In conversation
here xyx
Tana
Xxy xyx
Adkin
yx KC
yx yx
on
xyx
theyxcriminal
yxxyx yxBaryx
xyx
after
yxxa turbulent
yxxy yxyx
yx y 18
x yx
months
yx yxy xx
thetimes.co.uk
OUT OF COURT
The cases, the chatter, the chaos:
what’s really going on in the law
Worker gets
electric shock
Courts in England and Wales have
been crumbling for some time,
with lawyers routinely
complaining that pipes burst,
heating systems go on the blink
and lavatories overflow. But this
week there are reports of court
staff actually being in danger.
A staff member at Snaresbrook
crown court in east London
received minor injuries after
suffering an electric shock. The
Courts and Tribunals Service said
that a courtroom was “briefly
closed today while engineers
confirmed the electrics were safe
to use”. The staff member is
understood to be well and the
agency said that “no cases were
affected”. So that’s all right, then.
Rumpus at the Bailey
Law diary spies report that there
were “dock failures” at the Old
Bailey this week — where the
authorities are unable to transport
the accused to the court — in at
least two significant murder trials.
Judge Sarah Whitehouse said
that during a pre-trial hearing in
one that “the prisons minister and
courts minister came and had
breakfast with the judges this
morning and these problems were
canvassed with them. It is an
ongoing problem.”
There was laughter among
senior barristers when the judge
said that the prison transfer
service says that just 1 per cent of
hearings were affected. In this
instance, the pre-trial hearing to
deal with timetables, jury
questionnaires and other matters
proceeded without the defendant.
Contempt confusion
Of all Whitehall departments, one
would expect that the law officers
would be able to get a grip on
contempt of court proceedings.
The Times reported this week
on a decision by Michael
Tomlinson KC, the solicitor-
general, to bring contempt
proceedings against a 68-year-old
climate protester, who is accused
of attempting to sway a jury’s
decision — but as to whether she
was alleged to have committed a
criminal or civil contempt was a
cause of some debate.
Officials and in-house lawyers
at the attorney-general’s office
were adamant that criminal
contempt did not exist and the
proceedings against Trudi Warner
were purely a civil matter. They
maintained this view in the face
of guidance from the Crown
Prosecution Service — ultimate
boss, the attorney-general —
which gives chapter and verse on
the distinctions between criminal
and civil contempt.
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for judicial appointments
56 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

Weather
Today Sunny spells and scattered showers, longer spells of rain in western Scotland. Max 19C (66F), min 2C (36F) Weather Eye
Paul Simons
Around Britain Five days ahead Wind speed Sea state Orkney Shetland
Key: b=bright, c=cloud, d=drizzle, pc=partly cloudy Becoming drier in the 34 Calm
du=dull, f=fair, fg=fog, h=hail, m=mist, r=rain, (mph) 29 12
sh=showers, sl=sleet, sn=snow, s=sun, t=thunder south and east for a time, Slight 28
*=previous day **=data not available but further rain is likely in Temperature Moderate
Rough
Temp C Rain mm Sun hr* the north and west 28 (degrees C)
12
midday yesterday 24 hrs to 5pm yesterday
11 26
17 R 14.2 0.2
Tomorrow Flood alerts and warnings
Aberdeen
A mixture of sunny spells and
Aberporth 15 C 14.8 0.0
scattered showers, followed by a At 17:00 on Wednesday there were 15
Anglesey 16 B 5.8 0.0 rather chilly night. three flood warnings and 17 flood 10
Aviemore 17 R 20.6 1.5 Max 18C, min 1C alerts in England, three flood warnings
Barnstaple 16 C 8.8 ** 21

T
18 R 2.6 **
and 30 flood alerts in Wales, and seven Aberdeen
C F his week auroras have
Bedford 35 95
flood warnings and five flood alerts in been seen lighting up the
Belfast 14 R 5.0 0.8
Scotland. 30 86
Birmingham 16 R 10.2 **
For further information and updates night skies in stunning
Bournemouth 18 R 19.2 0.0 14 NORTH 25 77
pillars of glowing green,
in England visit flood-warning- 20 68
Bridlington 17 C 9.4 **
information.service.gov.uk, for Wales SEA 15 59 red and purple over many
Bristol 17 C 11.8 0.2
16 C 20.4 0.1 naturalresources.wales/flooding and 11 10 50
Camborne
13 for Scotland SEPA.org.uk Edinburgh parts of the UK, at least where the
Cardiff 18 R 6.8 0.2
17
17 Glasgow 5 41
skies have been clear enough of
Edinburgh 17 S 10.0 0.0 0 32
Eskdalemuir 14 C 54.6 0.1
14 22 -5 23 clouds to give a good view.
Glasgow 15 R 23.4 0.0 -10 14 Auroras are most frequent and
17 R 10.2 ** 18
Hereford Londonderry
Herstmonceux 19 C 2.4 0.0 ATLANTIC
-15 5 most intense the further north you
Ipswich 19 B 0.0 0.4
Newcastle are, and so in the UK the best
OCEAN Carlisle
Isle of Man 16 PC 2.2 0.0
Saturday Belfast sightings have been in northern
Isle of Wight 19 C 1.2 ** 16
Jersey 22 PC 0.0 0.6 Cloud and rain spreading across 15 14 Scotland. But auroras have also
Ireland, but largely dry elsewhere with 14
Keswick 15 R 59.8 ** sunny spells. rk
York been seen as far south as Herne Bay
Kinloss 21 R 13.2 2.9 in Kent and Penzance in Cornwall.
Max 18C, min 4C 13
Leeds 16 R 8.8 **
Lerwick 12 C 5.8 7.2 Manchester Hull
Although an aurora can happen at
Leuchars 19 D 7.4 0.4 Liverpoo
Liverpool 16 any time of the year, there is an
Lincoln 17 R 4.8 0.0 Galway IRISH 17
upsurge of activity around the
Liverpool 17 C 2.6 ** 13 SEA 16 Sheffield
London 20 C 5.2 0.0 Dublin equinoxes, and the autumn equinox
Llandudno
Lyneham 16 C 15.4 0.2 occurs this Saturday. This year is
Manchester 17 R 7.6 0.0
19 R 0.0 0.3
13 15 Nottingham particularly good because the sun is
Margate Shrewsbury
16 growing more active as it
Milford Haven 17 R 12.6 **
Norwich
Newcastle 16 C 2.6 ** 5 approaches solar maximum in 2025
14
Nottingham 16 R 11.2 0.0
17
Birmingham Cambridge in its 11-year cycle of activity, when
Orkney 15 R 5.6 8.7 Cork
Oxford 18 R 6.4 ** 15 magnetic storms on the sun reach
Swansea Oxford 18
Plymouth 17 R 13.0 ** their peak, seen in the increasing
Portland 16 C 13.8 ** Cardiff
Scilly, St Mary’s 16 C 9.8 **
Sunday Channel Islands CELTIC 18 numbers of sunspots on its surface.
Shoreham 19 C 4.2 0.0 Windy and cloudy with rain across
SEA Bristol London As the sun erupts with magnetic
northern and western areas, but
Shrewsbury 15 R 13.2 0.1 mainly dry with sunny intervals in the 17
Snowdonia 13 C 45.8 ** southeast. Southampton
storms, it blasts out charged
16 particles which hurtle through
Southend 20 C 0.4 0.3 Max 21C, min 10C eter
Exeter
South Uist 14 C 28.8 ** 19 Plymouth Brighton space, and when these smash into
Stornoway 15 PC 5.6 1.1
Tiree 15 D 25.2 0.0
the Earth’s upper atmosphere, they
Whitehaven 14 R 82.8 1.8 19
17 can set off powerful geomagnetic
CHANNEL 4
Wick 16 C 12.2 ** 19 storms. These storms excite oxygen
Yeovilton 17 R 6.6 0.0
and nitrogen gases high up in the
17
General situation: Sunny spells and heavy with hail and thunder. Light in northern areas during the afternoon, atmosphere and make them glow
The world 21
scattered showers, some thundery. to moderate west or southwesterly but also some sunny spells. Light like coloured neon lights — oxygen
All readings local midday yesterday
E Eng, E Mids, E Anglia, London, winds. Maximum 18C (64F), to moderate west or southwesterly giving off green and red, nitrogen
Alicante 28 PC Madeira 25 PC 19 SE Eng: A largely dry and sunny start, minimum 4C (39F). winds. Maximum 16C (61F), glowing blue and deep red.
Amsterdam 20 B Madrid 22 PC but cloud will increase with a few Scotland: Rather cloudy with minimum 5C (41F).
Athens 28 S Malaga 28 PC
scattered heavy showers during the persistent rain in northern and western NW Eng, Cen N Eng, Lake District, Twice as many geomagnetic
Auckland 18 S Mallorca 27 PC storms happen on average around
Monday afternoon, locally thundery. Light areas, but drier with sunny spells IoM, NE Eng: Much of the day will be
Bahrain 36 S Malta 33 S
Bangkok 34 PC Melbourne 17 B Mainly dry in the southeast with
to moderate southwesterly winds. further south and east. Moderate to dry with sunny spells, but areas of the time of the equinoxes in March
Barbados ** ** Mexico City 25 PC bright or sunny spells, but rather Maximum 19C (66F), near-gale southwesterly winds, turning cloud will bring a few well-scattered and September compared with the
Barcelona 23 PC Miami 33 T cloudy and breezy elsewhere with minimum 6C (43F). northwesterly in the west. Maximum showers, most frequent in the west.
showers or outbreaks of rain. Wales, SW Eng, Cen S Eng, W Mids, 17C (63F), minimum 4C (39F). Light to moderate southwesterly
rest of the year, and so equinoxes
Beijing 27 S Milan 21 R
Beirut 29 PC Mombasa 30 PC Max 23C, min 8C Channel Is: A mixture of sunny N Ireland, Republic of Ireland: winds. Maximum 17C (63F), are prime times for spotting auroras.
Belgrade 26 S Montreal 16 C spells and scattered showers, some Scattered showers, most widespread minimum 2C (36F). Usually the Earth’s magnetic field
Berlin 22 S Moscow 23 S helps to shield us from the onslaught
Bermuda 29 PC Mumbai 31 ** 17
Bordeaux 26 PC Munich 22 S Tides Noon today of solar storms, but around the
Brussels 20 PC Nairobi 27 B Tidal predictions.
HIGH equinoxes the tilt of the Earth’s
Bucharest 25 S Naples 30 PC Heights in metres
17
1016 magnetic poles creates cracks in the
Budapest 26 PC New Orleans 32 S Today Ht Ht 1024
Buenos Aires ** ** New York 23 B 22 Aberdeen 05:34 3.9 18:00 3.7 magnetic field.
Cairo 30 PC Nice 24 C Avonmouth 11:24 11.5 23:44 11.3 And when these cracks are open,
Calcutta 28 ** Nicosia 31 PC Belfast 03:16 3.4 15:32 3.2 LOW the magnetic field on Earth becomes
Canberra 22 S Oslo 9 R 19 11:04 10.8 23:22 10.5
Cardiff 1008
Cape Town 18 PC Paris 23 PC 09:53 4.8 22:09 4.7 992
connected to that on the sun and
Devonport 1016
Chicago 16 R Perth 19 B
Dover 02:49 6.3 15:11 6.3 lets the sun’s charged particles flood
Copenhagen 20 DU Prague 23 S 1008
30 PC 11 PC Tuesday Dublin 03:52 3.7 16:18 3.6 down towards the Earth’s north and
Corfu Reykjavik
Bright or sunny spells, especially in Falmouth 08:53 4.6 21:10 4.5 south magnetic poles, setting off the
Delhi 33 ** Riga 19 PC 1000
the southeast, but rather cloudy in Greenock 04:35 3.5 16:57 3.2
Dubai 40 S Rio de Janeiro ** **
the north and west with occasional Cold front geomagnetic storms and energising
Dublin 15 SH Riyadh 40 S Harwich 03:55 3.7 16:03 3.8
Faro 24 S Rome 26 S
outbreaks of rain.
Holyhead 02:19 5.1 14:45 4.9 1008 Warm front the gasses that glow in the lights of
Max 22C, min 5C Occluded front the auroras.
Florence 25 PC San Francisco 21 PC Hull 10:36 6.7 22:57 6.4 1016
Frankfurt 24 PC Santiago 16 S Leith 06:57 5.0 19:23 4.8 NIGEL Trough
Geneva 24 PC São Paulo ** ** Liverpool 02:59 8.5 15:25 8.2
Gibraltar
Helsinki
25
14
PC
R
Seoul
Seychelles
21
28
R
B
15 London Bridge
Lowestoft
05:59
01:43
6.3
2.3
18:19
13:56
6.5
2.4
Synoptic situation Highs and lows
24hrs to 5pm yesterday
Hours of darkness
Aberdeen 19:42-06:23
Speak directly to one
30 SH Low pressure centred close to
of our forecasters on
Hong Kong 31 PC Singapore Milford Haven 10:23 6.1 22:42 5.9
Warmest: Cavendish, Belfast 19:56-06:39
Honolulu 32 B St Petersburg 19 B
15 Morecambe 03:10 8.5 15:37 8.2 northern Scotland will dominate Suffolk, 22.2C Birmingham 19:39-06:23
Istanbul 24 S Stockholm 15 B the weather across the British
Jerusalem
Johannesburg
30
23
PC
S
Sydney
Tel Aviv
33
30
S
PC
20 Newhaven
Newquay
03:00
09:16
6.1
6.1
15:18
21:36
6.0
6.0 Isles, bringing a mixture of
sunny spells and scattered
Coldest: Bealach Na Ba, 3.2C
Wettest: Shap,
Cumbria, 82.8mm
Cardiff
Exeter
19:44-06:28
19:45-06:30 09065 777675
Oban 09:48 3.4 21:55 3.3 Sunniest: Kirkwall, 8.7hrs* Glasgow 19:50-06:32
Kuala Lumpur 31 PC Tenerife 28 PC heavy showers, some thundery,
** ** 30 PC 19 Penzance 08:47 4.9 21:03 4.8 Liverpool 19:44-06:27 8am to 5pm daily (calls are charged
Kyiv Tokyo most frequent in southern and
28 PC 17 PC Portsmouth 03:26 4.3 15:50 4.3 Sun and moon London 19:32-06:16 at £1.55 plus network extras)
Lanzarote Vancouver western areas. An occluded For Greenwich Manchester 19:41-06:24
Las Palmas 27 PC Venice 26 PC Shoreham 03:05 5.7 15:26 5.6 Sun rises: 06.44
The Times weather page Southampton 03:09 4.4 15:09 4.3
front will bring longer spells of Newcastle 19:39-06:21
Lima 18 D Vienna 25 PC Sun sets: 19.02
rain to western and northern Moon rises: 14.15 Norwich 19:27-06:10
Lisbon 22 PC Warsaw 22 S is provided by Swansea 10:21 8.2 22:37 8.0
Scotland, and also parts of Moon sets: 21.18 Penzance 19:53-06:38
Los Angeles 23 PC Washington 23 B Tees 07:51 5.0 20:24 4.8
Luxor 36 S Zurich 22 PC
Northern Ireland. First quarter: September 22 Sheffield 19:38-06:21
Weymouth 10:35 1.7 22:59 1.6 weatherquest .co.uk
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 57

Sport
4.10 Handicap (£4,187: 1m) (12) 3.10 Handicap (£5,757: 1m 4f) (8)
Ayr
Rob Wright
7.00 Handicap (£13,500: 7f) (14)

1.20 Novice Stakes 3.55 Handicap (£9,631: 6f) (6)

(2-Y-O: £7,851: 7f) (11 runners)
3.45 Handicap (£15,462: 6f) (7)

4.45 Handicap (Div I: £3,664: 7f) (11)

4.30 Handicap (£5,653: 1m 6f) (7)
7.30 Handicap (3-Y-O: £5,051: 1m 6f) (6)
4.20 Handicap (£4,187: 2m 1f) (5)

1.50 Novice Stakes (2-Y-O: £4,123: 1m) (9)

8.00 Handicap (£4,004: 5f) (9) 4.55 Maiden Stakes (£4,860: 1m) (8)
5.05 Handicap (3-Y-O: £4,397: 1m) (11)

5.17 Handicap (Div II: £3,664: 7f) (11)

2.25 Handicap (£4,187: 5f) (21) 8.30 Handicap (£4,004: 1m 2f) (12) 5.30 Handicap (£5,757: 1m) (13)

5.40 Handicap (Div I: £3,768: 7f) (10)

Chelmsford
Rob Wright

Pontefract
5.24 Handicap (£4,793: 1m 6f) (7) Rob Wright 6.10 Handicap (Div II: £3,768: 7f) (10)
Yarmouth
Rob Wright

2.00 Handicap (£4,187: 6f) (11)

2.10 Nursery (2-Y-O: £3,768: 1m) (7)

3.00 Handicap (£15,462: 1m 2f) (10)
6.00 Maiden Stakes (2-Y-O: £3,725: 1m) (9)

Course specialists
Ayr: Trainers C Johnston, 8 winners from 30
runners, 26.7%; J J Quinn, 16 from 82, 19.5%;
I Jardine, 37 from 278, 13.3%. Jockeys B Garritty,
15 winners from 91 rides, 16.5%; J Fanning, 36
from 222, 16.2%; D C Costello, 3 from 19, 15.8%.
Chelmsford: Trainers J Jones, 4 from 14, 28.6%;
2.45 Maiden Stakes (2-Y-O: £5,373: 1m) (8) J J Quinn, 20 from 73, 27.4%; J Tate, 32 from 133,
24.1%. Jockeys J Crowley, 25 from 86, 29.1%;
2.35 Novice Stakes (2-Y-O: £4,320: 6f) (12) W Buick, 19 from 109, 17.4%; N Callan, 15 from 96,
6.30 Handicap (£4,004: 7f) (14) 15.6%.
Pontefract: Trainers G Boughey, 8 from 24,
33.3%; S & E Crisford, 5 from 15, 33.3%; A Murphy,
3.35 Handicap (£8,898: 1m 2f) (7) 5 from 16, 31.2%. Jockeys H Crouch, 4 from 11,
36.4%; R Havlin, 4 from 16, 25%; T Marquand,
7 from 32, 21.9%.
Yarmouth: Trainers R Beckett, 3 from 10, 30%;
W Haggas, 31 from 122, 25.4%; E Walker, 10 from
49, 20.4%. Jockeys James Doyle, 17 from 71,
3.20 Nursery (2-Y-O: £5,653: 6f) (11) 23.9%; A Farragher, 8 from 37, 21.6%; C Planas,
4 from 20, 20%.

Blinkered first time: Ayr 2.25 Honour Your Dreams.

Chelmsford 6.30 Runner Bean. Yarmouth 3.55
Sterling Knight. 4.30 Tajanis. 5.05 Dream Pirate.

Yesterday’s racing results

Beverley
Going: soft (heavy in places)
1.50 (1m 100yd) 1, Andromedas Kingdom
(Frederick Larson, 5-1); 2, Rajawail (100-1);
3, Hidden Code (7-1). 7 ran. NR: Mr Heinz,
Na Scoitear. 2 l, 2 l. M Appleby.
2.20 (5f) 1, Rogue Enforcer (D Tudhope, 11-4
jt-fav); 2, Ingleby Archie (3-1); 3, Willolarupi
(5-1). 13 ran. 1l, l. P W Chapple-Hyam.
2.55 (7f 96yd) 1, Local Arms (D Tudhope, 2-1
jt-fav; Rob Wright’s nap); 2, Hug A Tree (10-1);
3, May (11-2). 9 ran. NR: Sovereign Queen.
8l, l. K R Burke.
3.25 (5f) 1, Enchanting (Hollie Doyle, 11-4);
2, Reprised (9-4 fav); 3, South Parade (13-2).
8 ran. NR: Nariko. 1 l, 1l. A M Balding.
4.00 (5f) 1, Mattice (D Allan, 9-2); 2, Count
D’Orsay (9-2); 3, May Blossom (10-1). 9 ran.
NR: Rodborough. Sh hd, hd. T D Easterby.
4.35 (1m 1f 207yd) 1, Man Of Monaco
(J Fanning, 13-2); 2, Lope De Light (13-8);
3, Favorite Boy (40-1). 5 ran. NR: Wilding.
l, 9 l. C Johnston.
5.10 (1m 1f 207yd) 1, Dandy’s Angel (Ryan
Sexton, 9-2 jt-fav); 2, Contrast (9-1); 3, Mac
Ailey (14-1). 10 ran. Nk, l. J S Wainwright.
5.45 (1m 1f 207yd) 1, Frankendael (Callum
Rodriguez, 6-4 fav); 2, Loddon (16-1); 3, Bay Of
Naples (100-30). 7 ran. NR: Billy Roberts,
Kingsley Pride. 2 l, 3 l. E Bethell.
Placepot: £128.90.
Quadpot: £11.50.
Kelso
Going: good
3.30 (2m 2f 25yd hdle) 1, Ambassador
(Joshua Thompson, 13-2); 2, Balranald (11-1);
3, Iolani (18-1). 8 ran. NR: Benito. l, 6 l. Micky
Hammond.
4.05 (2m 1f 14yd ch) 1, Cedar Hill (Ryan Mania,
9-2); 2, Geromino (85-40 fav); 3, Fusain
(100-30). 4 ran. NR: Netywell, Well Educated.
2 l, 7l. A M Thomson.
4.40 (2m 4f 189yd hdle) 1, Idem (P W Wadge,
4-5 fav); 2, Sean Og (10-1); 3, The Big Jetaway
(15-8). 7 ran. 9 l, 5l. Miss Lucinda V Russell.
5.15 (2m 2f 25yd hdle) 1, Darkest Day (Jamie
Hamilton, 11-4); 2, A Shining Moon (5-1); 3, Ten
Ten Twenty (100-30). 8 ran. NR: Coeur
Aimant. ns, nk. W Young Jr.
5.50 (2m 4f 189yd hdle) 1, Glinger Flame
(Sean Quinlan, 9-2); 2, Bucko’s Boy (3-1);
3, Sebastopol (2-1 fav). 6 ran. 4 l, 8 l.
N G Richards.
6.25 (2m 5f 133yd ch) 1, Hidden Commander
(B S Hughes, 4-1); 2, Without Conviction (6-1);
3, Hermann Clermont (10-1). 6 ran. Nk, 3l.
W Coltherd.
7.00 (2m 51yd hdle) 1, Yougoglencoko
(Abbie McCain, 6-1); 2, Miss Arabella (11-2); 3,
Bishop Hill (11-4). 5 ran. 6l, sh hd. D McCain Jr.
Placepot: £400.10. Quadpot: £18.20.
Sandown Park
Going: good to soft (soft in places)
1.55 (5f 10yd) 1, Harb (T P Queally, 100-30 fav);
2, Bang On The Bell (5-1); 3, Firenze Rosa (10-1).
7 ran. NR: Em Jay Kay. 2 l, l. P Crate.
2.30 (1m) 1, Dambuster (Oisin Murphy, 17-2);
2, Go Daddy (33-1); 3, Whiskey Pete (8-11 fav).
10 ran. Hd, 2l. A M Balding.
3.05 (7f) 1, Navy Jack (Rossa Ryan, 9-4 fav);
2, Kings Valley (6-1); 3, Brioni (40-1). 10 ran.
NR: Annafel, Duke’s Command, Imperial
Guard, Sir Galahad. 1 l, 1l. C G Cox.
3.40 (1m) 1, Chindit (P J Dobbs, 7-2); 2, Knight
(5-2 fav); 3, Raadobarg (5-1). 8 ran. NR: Eydon,
Novus. Hd, 1 l. R Hannon.
4.15 (1m) 1, Classic Times (David Egan, 6-1);
2, Tango Tonight (5-2 fav); 3, Eastern Charm
(4-1). 7 ran. NR: Bloomwithgrace, Chealamy.
5 l, l. R Varian.
4.50 (1m 1f 209yd) 1, Miller Spirit (T P Queally,
5-1); 2, Star Ahoy (11-8 fav); 3, Goldsborough
(11-2). 6 ran. NR: Born Ruler, Miss Dolly Rocker,
Outgun. 2l, 9l. G L Moore.
5.25 (1m 1f 209yd) 1, Kamanika (J Doyle, 4-1);
2, Kynsa (5-1); 3, Cherryhawk (11-2). 10 ran.
NR: Expert Witness. l, sh hd. Joseph Parr.
Placepot: £9.40. Quadpot: £3.50.
Yarmouth
Going: good
2.05 (6f 3yd) 1, Zina Colada (Benoit D L
Sayette, 20-1); 2, Inanna (18-1); 3, Rhythmic
Acclaim (9-4 fav). 7 ran. Nk, 1 l. G G
Margarson.
2.40 (6f 3yd) 1, Romantic Style (W Buick, 6-4
fav); 2, Apeeling (22-1); 3, Lou Lou’s Gift (13-2).
12 ran. NR: Gogo Yubari. 3 l, 1 l. C Appleby.
3.10 (7f 3yd) 1, Edge Of Blue (W Buick, 7-2
jt-fav); 2, Teraabb (25-1); 3, Global Skies (9-1).
12 ran. Hd, 1l. C Appleby.
3.45 (1m 2f 23yd) 1, Sapphire Seas (W Buick,
9-2); 2, Mukaddamah (16-1); 3, Infinite Cosmos
(5-1). 14 ran. 2 l, l. C Appleby.
4.20 (1m 1f 21yd) 1, First Sight (W Buick, 11-2);
2, Flying Frontier (4-1); 3, Return To Dubai
(9-1). 9 ran. l, 2 l. C Appleby.
4.55 (1m 3f 104yd) 1, Wynter Wildes (Mikkel
Mortensen, 13-2); 2, Shazam (13-2); 3, Divya
(6-1). 9 ran. l, 1 l. C Fellowes.
5.30 (6f 3yd) 1, How Impressive (R Kingscote,
4-1 fav); 2, Dark Side Thunder (6-1); 3, Lord
Uhtred (9-2). 11 ran. NR: Razzam. l, sh hd.
H Palmer.
Placepot: £5,867.30.
Quadpot: £61.80.
58 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

Sport Cricket
Bowler accused
Forgotten man Nair
shows class to hold up of racial slur
Surrey’s title charge Elizabeth Ammon
An investigation has been launched in-

K arun Nair
played the last
of his six Tests
for India in March
2017 and has since
the chance. Yesterday
against Surrey, the
County Championship
title favourites, he
completed a 16th first-
to the alleged use of racially offensive
language by the Sussex seam bowler
Ari Karvelas during a match against
Leicestershire last week.
Karvelas, 29, is alleged to have said of
often despaired of a class hundred with a the Leicestershire and Pakistan bats-
career that seemingly stream of stunning man Umar Amin: “Send him back to the
lost its way (Mark and unorthodox village he came from.” The ECB con-
Baldwin writes). strokes, moving swiftly firmed that an investigation by its in-
Last year, the to 144 not out before tegrity department is under way but
31-year-old who scored bad light and heavy would not reveal its nature.
303 not out against rain ruled out any The Cricketer reported that Rehan
England in 2016, further play from 2pm. Ahmed, the England and Leicester-
tweeted: “Dear Nair’s brilliance may shire spinner who was at the non-strik-
cricket, give me one not only frustrate er’s end at the time, took issue with Kar-
more chance.” More Surrey’s title tilt but velas’s comment. It is understood that
recently, he spoke of could give Northants a Karvelas claims it was not racially moti-
finding “light at the glimmer of hope for vated but relates to the common term
end of a very dark survival. They resume “village” in English cricket, used to de-
tunnel” as he today at 351 for nine scribe a player who is not very good.
rediscovered his form and must win here and Sussex declined to comment beyond
and confidence. beat Essex next week what Paul Farbrace, the head coach,
When to have an outside said on Monday: “We have decided it is
Northamptonshire chance of climbing not appropriate for Ari Karvelas to be
offered him a three- above Kent and made available for selection until the
match contract this Middlesex, but crazier investigation that is in place has been
month, Nair jumped at things have happened. Nair, who scored 303 against England seven years ago, inset, struck 144 not out to frustrate leaders Surrey concluded.” The club also confirmed
that Karvelas would not comment.

Counties could use football names Root’

s search for
form washed out
Elizabeth Ammon
Counties are considering playing some
short-form cricket under the names of
their local football or rugby clubs as
they prepare to vote on the future of the
Hundred.
As revealed by The Times, the
controversial 100-ball tournament
could be scrapped and replaced with a
county-based competition, played in a
football league-style pyramid, as ECB
officials grapple with the long-term
future of the Hundred and the increas-
ing pressure on budgets.
The ECB will present county chiefs
with a number of options for the direc-
tion of the men’s competition next
month, which include: keeping the
Hundred as it is with the eight existing
teams; increasing it to a ten-team
tournament to include a side based
near Taunton/Bristol and a team based
in Durham; or getting rid of the eight
existing teams and replacing them with
county-based teams in a larger compe-
tition to be played in a league system,
with promotion and relegation.
The proposals will also include ideas
about garnering private investment
into either the existing Hundred by
selling equity in the teams, or a new
model whereby the 18 first-class coun-
ties — or all 39 first-class and National
(formerly minor) counties — can bring
in their own private investment.
There have already been discussions
between some counties and their local
football or rugby club that could lead to
counties playing under different names
in an attempt to harness other local
sports fans. For example, Sussex could
play as Brighton & Hove Albion or
Durham as Newcastle United.
One area up for discussion will be
whether it is sensible to continue
having two short-form competitions:
the T20 Blast and the Hundred. Some
counties have noticed a negative
knock-on impact on their Blast ticket
sales because it has been squeezed into
a shorter time period.
English cricket is facing financial
pressures and these will be substantial-
ly increased when the ECB announces
an equality and diversity action plan
next week in response to the recom-
mendations made by the Independent
Commission for Equity in Cricket.
The action plan will contain a num-
ber of areas of work to improve equality
in the sport but they come with a price
tag of more than £5 million a year —
which, combined with the costs of
giving women cricketers the same level
of match fees as the men and the pres-
sure to increase the value of central
contracts to combat the threat from
franchise leagues, means the ECB is
under significant financial pressure.
There is also a recognition that the
value of contracts in the Hundred will
need to increase substantially if it is to
compete with other franchise leagues
and attract the biggest overseas stars.
It is unlikely that there would be any
change before 2025 and perhaps not
before 2028, when the present
broadcast deal with Sky expires, but
there is a belief, under the new ECB
administration, that the domestic
schedule as it exists does not work.
Any changes to domestic cricket re-
quire a two-thirds majority vote by the
counties and although there is a split
between the ten non-Test venues and
the eight Test/Hundred host grounds,
the most pertinent issue for the coun-
ties will be financial sustainability —
they receive £1.3 million a year as a divi-
dend for accepting the Hundred but the
tournament is not making a profit and
that financial model may not be able to
continue for much longer.
The discussions will also need to
include the future of the Women’s Hun-
dred, which has been a success for the
women’s game. There is no intention to
have a binding vote yet. The Hundred
will definitely be played in 2024.
John Westerby
Joe Root was denied the opportunity to
find some form with the bat before the
World Cup when the first match of
England’s one-day international series
against Ireland was washed out.
After scoring only 39 runs in four
innings during the ODIs against New
Zealand, Root had asked to play against
Ireland on his home ground, Heading-
ley, in the hope of getting some runs
under his belt before he leaves for India
with England’s World Cup squad on
Wednesday. However, play was aban-
doned without a ball being bowled.
Root — who was the only member of
the World Cup squad included in the
series against Ireland — is unlikely to
play in the second game, at Trent
Bridge on Saturday.
“It wasn’t fit for play and I think that
[not playing] was right in the end,” said
Zak Crawley, who was due to captain
England for the first time.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
Raducanu will
not play again
until next year
Tennis
Stuart Fraser Tennis Correspondent
Emma Raducanu has confirmed that
she will not return to the tour until next
season as she recovers from three sur-
geries. The 20-year-old also insisted
that winning Wimbledon remains the
“ultimate dream”.
Providing a first update on her
progress in three months, Raducanu
ruled out competing in 2023 and is tar-
geting a comeback in time for January’s
Australian Open.
She has not played a match since a
first-round defeat at the Porsche Grand
Prix in Stuttgart in April, after which
she announced that she would be
undergoing an operation on her left an-
kle and one on each hand.
“Next season, I’ll be back,” Raducanu
told BBC London News. “This season
all the slams are finished, so it was diffi-
cult to watch them go by. I was just try-
ing to stay in my lane as much as poss-
ible and keep focused on my recovery
and my path back.”
After becoming the first qualifier in
Open Era history to win a grand-slam
title at the 2021 US Open, she is eager to
go all the way on home soil. “I’d say 100
per cent, Wimbledon is the dream,” Ra-
ducanu said. “It always has been. The
ultimate dream [is] still and always has
been to win Wimbledon.”
Raducanu has been dogged by physi-
cal problems since she started compet-
ing full-time on the WTA Tour after her
US Open triumph. In the 26
LV= County Championship scoreboards
Division One
Essex v Hampshire
Chelmsford (second day of four):
Hampshire, with all first-innings wickets in
hand, are 437 runs behind Essex
Essex First Innings (overnight 310-6)
M J J Critchley c Gubbins b Dawson 99
S R Harmer c Abbott b Organ 62
U T Yadav c Abbott b Organ 51
S J Cook not out 7 Total (no wkt, 7 overs)
Extras (b 8, lb 2, w 1, nb 10) 21
Total (9 wkts dec, 119.4 overs) 447
J A Porter did not bat.
59
Sport
Benn criticises
‘trial by media’
on ring return
Boxing
Rick Broadbent, Tom Kershaw
Conor Benn said that he had been a
victim of “trial by media” and will seek
permission to fight Chris Eubank Jr in
the UK in December after announcing
his return to the ring against Rodolfo
tournaments contested as a grand- Orozco on Saturday in Florida.
slam champion, she only twice won Benn, 26, has not fought since he
three consecutive matches. failed two Voluntary Anti-Doping
Criticism continues to be aimed at Association tests in the lead-up to his
Raducanu for her sizeable commercial cancelled bout with Eubank Jr in
portfolio of nine blue-chip sponsors, es- October and has since been engaged in
timated by Forbes to be worth £12 mil- a legal dispute to clear his name.
lion a year. “The fact that they are still Benn was provisionally suspended by
talking about me even though I am not Solheim Cup UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) in March, but
at these events, it’s just a compliment,” that de facto ban was lifted after a hear-
Raducanu said. Finca Cortesin,
Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal has re- Malaga, Spain
Benn is unbeaten in
vealed his wish to play doubles with Tomorrow until Sunday 21 bouts; he fights
Carlos Alcaraz at the Paris Olympics Mexico’s Orozco
after saying he is unsure about retiring TV: Sky Sports Main
in 2024. Event, from 6.30am
The Spaniard, 37, is recovering from
surgery on his left hip. Before going
under the knife in June he announced
his intention to retire next year. Nadal, ing before a National Anti-Doping
though, seems to be having second panel hearing in July. Ukad and the
thoughts. British Boxing Board of Control have
“Let’s see,” Nadal, who won the men’s phenomenal record Hall, whose Solheim since launched an appeal against the
singles gold medal in 2008, told the
Spanish newspaper AS. “I think it’s
‘Europe’s (11-5-3) in the biennial
competition, and the
Cup record is 8-5-0, gets
her eye in at Finca
decision.
While Benn does not hold a profes-
going to be my last year. I’m pretty con-
vinced. Although, at the same time, at
never been world No 8 believes
this side is even
Cortesin Golf Club sional boxing licence in the UK, his
promoter, Eddie Hearn, insisted that he
this point, I don’t know. If suddenly
things are working very well, I feel fine
so strong’ stronger than the
ones that beat the
Solheim Cup
appearance, added: “I
was clear to fight “anywhere in the
world”, and said the decision to fight
C
physically, if I feel competitive and en- harley Hull and United States in 2019 think this is the now was taken because they had heard
joy what I do, why would I limit myself? Georgia Hall are and 2021. strongest team we’ve nothing from Ukad and were unsure if
“I would like to play them [the confident that “I think this is a ever had on paper, for there would ever be an appeal.
Olympics] one more time,” Nadal said. Europe have their very, very strong sure. Like Charley Benn said he still advocated life bans
“I have not had the slightest “strongest team” as team,” she said. “It’s said, there’s not one for those who dope deliberately. “But
conversation with him [Alcaraz] but I they bid to win a third got a lot of depth.” weak player on our if you are innocent don’t let it be trial
would also like to and it would be a good successive Solheim Hall, the 2018 Open team. So, yeah, we’re by media or politics because that’s
motivation, another incentive for me to Cup for the first time. champion who is very confident going what this is,” he said. “Hopefully,
be able to close my Olympic cycle play- Hull, 27, has a making her fourth into this.” people will give me the benefit of
ing with Carlos.” the doubt.”
Fall of wickets 1-0, 2-18, 3-82, 4-96, 5-132, Bowling Porter 3-0-10-0; Cook 3-3-0-0; D R Briggs not out 71 Northamptonshire have scored 351 for nine Bowling Roach 19-6-61-0; Worrall 25-7-73-1;
6-309, 7-357, 8-427, 9-447. Harmer 1-1-0-0. Extras (b 1, lb 7, nb 10) 18 wickets against Surrey Overton 15.5-1-64-3; Clark 21-5-43-1; Burns
Bowling Barker 21-5-42-1; Abbas 24-3-76-2; Umpires S J O’Shaughnessy and N J Llong. Total (6 wkts, 64 overs) 228 Northamptonshire First Innings (overnight 0.1-0-0-0; Lawes 22.5-5-100-4; Patel 1-0-7-0.
Surrey *R J Burns, D P Sibley, R S Patel, B S
Abbott 24-6-62-1; Dawson 35-2-165-3; Organ Middlesex v Warwickshire C N Miles, C Rushworth and O J Hannon- 171-6)
13.4-0-78-2; Gubbins 2-0-14-0. Dalby to bat. Sudharsan, †B T Foakes, C T Steel, J Clark, J
Lord’s (second day of four): Warwickshire, K K Nair not out 144 Overton, T E Lawes, K A J Roach, D J Worrall.
Hampshire First Innings with four first-innings wickets in hand, are Fall of wickets 1-0, 2-13, 3-25, 4-43, 5-87, 6-95. J Broad c Foakes b Lawes 17 Umpires R A White and P R Pollard.
T E Albert not out 6 107 runs ahead of Middlesex Bowling Murtagh 17-5-55-5; Bamber T A I Taylor lbw b Overton 66
15-4-51-1; Higgins 6-0-14-0; Yadav 12-1-53-0; No play: Old Trafford Lancashire v
F S Middleton not out 4 Middlesex First Innings 121 (O J Hannon- B W Sanderson b Overton 0 Nottinghamshire. Taunton Somerset 214-2 (T A
Extras 0 Dalby 5 for 29) De Caires 4-0-11-0; Helm 9-4-29-0; Robson C J White not out 5
1-0-7-0. Lammonby 109, L P Goldsworthy 70 no) v Kent.
10 Warwickshire First Innings (overnight 72-4) Extras (lb 3, w 2, nb 18) 23 Division Two: Derby Derbyshire v Sussex.
*N R T Gubbins, J M Vince, T J Prest, *W M H Rhodes not out 95 Umpires R J Warren and G D Lloyd. Total (9 wkts, 104.5 overs) 351 Leicester Yorkshire 155-9 (W S Davis 4-28) v
L A Dawson, †B C Brown, K H D Barker, E G Barnard lbw b Murtagh 13 Surrey v Northamptonshire Fall of wickets 1-33, 2-51, 3-106, 4-132, 5-138, Leicestershire. Worcester Worcestershire
F S Organ, K J Abbott and M Abbas to bat. †M G K Burgess b Murtagh 7 Kia Oval (second day of four): 6-151, 7-193, 8-307, 9-307. 104-1 (G H Roderick 52) v Durham.
60 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

Sport
Sport Rugby World Cup

Farrell returns as Arundell

continued from back Bevan Rodd, the third-choice
Probable England XV loose-head prop, should start with
to face Chile
No 15, or whether Elliot Daly or Henry
Arundell moves to full back, replacing
Smith.
Saturday 4.45pm
the hooker Theo Dan in the front
row, as David Ribbans and George
Martin combine at lock. Jack Walker,
Smith has chance
Supporters will be keen to see Arun-
dell, 20, who is set for his first start on
Stade Pierre-Mauroy, Lille
Live on ITV 1 the third-choice hooker, should make
the bench.
to have fun – and
the wing, alongside Max Malins. At
scrum half, the 36-year-old Danny
Care will look to bring pace to the
1
B Rodd
2
T Dan
3
K Sinckler
Maro Itoje, Jamie George, Jonny
May and Manu Tuilagi all look set to be
rested.
keep No 15 shirt

T
England side. The most interesting selections will he immediate Arundell and Smith.
Farrell is available again having 4 5 come in the back line. Smith and Farrell reaction to Last week there
completed his four-match ban for a D Ribbans G Martin were brought together as a playmaking that England were 5,000 fans who
dangerous tackle on the Wales back- duo in the No 10 and 12 shirts by the team, seeing did not turn up to the
row forward Taine Basham last month. 6 8 7 former head coach Eddie Jones, but Marcus Japan game in Nice.
He will regain the captaincy, with struggled to gel as a pairing. Smith and Henry Some who did go
Courtney Lawes set to be rested. L Ludlam B Vunipola J Willis Jones had huge success using Ford Arundell in the back booed the team after
Daly, who has started England’s first and Farrell in those positions at the three, seems to fall an aimless Alex
two World Cup matches on the wing, is 9 start of his reign with England — in into two camps — the Mitchell kick that
primed to move to outside centre D Care 10 2016 and 2017, when England won a Six optimists and dribbled over the
alongside Ollie Lawrence in the mid- Nations grand slam and 18 Tests in a pessimists (writes Will dead-ball line as the
field. O Farrell 12 row. Kelleher). English strategy bored
With three weeks until England’s O Lawrence 13 The pair also combined superbly The optimists, who them to frustration.
likely World Cup quarter-final on when England beat New Zealand in the might have decided to Others at home
October 15 — probably against Wales, E Daly 2019 World Cup semi-final. Ford was spend their Saturday switched off before
Fiji or Australia — Borthwick has time 11 15 14 dropped by Jones in 2021, the last time elsewhere, with a low- England rallied to
to try new tactics. H Arundell M Smith M Malins he and Farrell truly combined for key England-Chile secure a bonus-point
England are expected to beat World England. game, are suddenly win. Will those fans
Cup debutants Chile convincingly, but When the knockout stage begins, thinking it may be who turned off early
the coach seems to be using the pool D said. “I’ve come back Steward is likely to retain his usual full- worth tuning in for. now be persuaded to
match as a trial run for fringe players, from a couple of injuries back spot, but Smith can show he is a The prospect of turn on the television
untried combinations and those that made me think I’ll viable option there — albeit against Smith dazzling from — and keep it on?
players who have yet to feature. never get this opportu- weak opposition. full back, hitch- That is where the
Arundell and Malins have nity again and I chuck This week the attack coach, Richard kicking and goose- pessimists come in,
not played a minute of this myself into it as Wigglesworth, talked up the prospect stepping could bring though. Any mention
World Cup yet, but they much as I can. I of Smith playing full back. “He just back some joy to of “fun” and
have a chance to shine on don’t think any- jumped at it,” Wigglesworth said. “ ‘I’d watching England. So Borthwick’s team in
the wings. one of us would love to give it a go.’ That’s his attitude, too could the the same sentence
In the pack Jack feel aggrieved [it’s] infectious, [he] wants to play appearance of produces a knowing
Willis is set for his because of the the game and it brought great life to Arundell. scoff, to equal that of
World Cup debut, at quality in the back the pitch in the two performances The 20-year-old was the players and
open-side flanker, as row. so far. so electric in his first coaches who are
the starting pair of “There’s no re- “He’s trained there a fair bit and he’s season at London Irish annoyed they are not
Ben Earl and Lawes sentment towards been really impressive, he really has. It’s that the previous head receiving the credit
are rotated. the players that are definitely something that you look at coach, Eddie Jones, they think they
Willis has been trav- playing. We want more and more because of his attitude compared him to deserve for winning
elling reserve for the the team to be to it and how positive he is with it, and Bryan Habana, David their opening two
first two matches, so successful. We want then how he’s performed on the train- Campese, Jason World Cup games.
is determined to to get as far as we can ing field as well. Robinson and Matt Many England
make an impact. in this tournament, “One, he wants the ball. He is desper- Giteau. supporters have
Because he has re- no matter whether ate to get his hands on the ball, first and For his first try, with decided that this
signed for Toulouse, the you’re starting, on foremost. But he’s been really smart his first touch in Perth England team, with
French club he joined after the demise the bench travelling re- with where he positions himself, how last summer, he ran their kick-first style,
of Wasps last season, he will not be eligi- serve or not involved, he gets it, and hasn’t tried to play like a through and over two cannot be
ble for England after the World you want the best for the ten out wide. He’s gone, ‘Get me the ball, Wallabies. What an entertaining, which is
Cup. Willis will give everything team. and then I’ll play on.’ impact. premature and harsh.
to the national team while he “I love playing for “Then he’ll use the capability he’s got Arundell has not It did not help when
can. England. I can’t control the with his feet and his acceleration. It’s quite lit up rugby fields Joe Marler told us emotions lie, there is
“I don’t think my mindset decisions that are made really testament to him about how since that game — after the Japan game intrigue now around
changes, I grew up as a little there. I love playing for Tou- smart he is. suffering a foot injury that the team are Saturday’s game.
boy wanting to play for En- louse and they’ve looked after “He could have been a bit lost having at the back end of 2022 prepared to “win England will win, and
gland and that raw determi- me well since I’ve been there. not played there much but he is not. He — but if there is a pair ugly”, saying the qualify for the
nation has not changed,” he All I can focus on is becoming worked out the best places for him to of players to help lift darling side of 2003 knockout stage — that
as valuable a part of this squad get the ball to have a positive impact on some of the gloom did the same. much is assured.
Farrell returns at fly half and will share as possible and leaving the de- the team. I’ve been really impressed around England it is But wherever your Some players —
playmaking responsibilities with Smith cision to the powers that be.” with him.”

Former Wallaby slams ‘empty’ Jones over baffling calls

Elgan Alderman
Drew Mitchell has criticised Eddie
Jones for leaving out experienced
players and failing to give fans an
explanation, as Australia sit one defeat
away from likely elimination in the
World Cup pool stage.
Mitchell, who played in 71 Tests for
Australia between 2005 and 2016, laid
into the head coach on The Good, The
Bad & The Rugby podcast. The Walla-
bies lost to Fiji on Sunday for the first
time since 1954, their sixth defeat in
seven matches since Jones replaced
Dave Rennie. A loss against Wales on
Sunday would probably end their tour-
nament before the quarter-finals for the
first time in men’s World Cup history.
“Let’s not take away from the fact that
Fiji played really well,” Mitchell, 39, said
on the podcast. “But let’s also not take
away from the fact that we shouldn’t
have lost to Fiji. Eddie sits there and
goes, ‘Yeah, it’s my fault. I take full
responsibility.’
“What does that mean though? Like,
he doesn’t get dropped this week. He’s
not not coaching next week. It’s just like
an empty line in a press conference.
‘Yeah, I take full responsibility’. Like,
what does that equate to? Nothing.”
Jones focused on youth in his squad,
leaving out Michael Hooper, the
long-time captain with 125 caps, as well
as the experienced fly halves in Quade
Cooper and Bernard Foley. Carter
Gordon, 22, has been wearing No 10
and has had some shaky performances,
with Ben Donaldson taking over for the
final half-hour against Fiji.
“You’ve made some glaring decisions
around Quade, around Michael Hoop-
er,” Mitchell said. “Captaincy, there’s six
captains in seven weeks. Like, explain
some of these decisions to us. Because,
Jones has lost six of seven matches
since becoming Australia head coach
as fans, we’re all sitting here scratching
our heads. And a lot of the time we can
sit there and defend Eddie or the
Wallabies, because we can understand
logic in some of these decisions. But
there’s none of it, and he’s sat there and
not given any explanation as to why
Quade’s not there. Why’s Michael
Hooper not there?
“He said, ‘Oh, because Michael
Hooper’s injured’. Well, you’ve taken
Pone Fa’amausili. You’ve taken Max
Jorgensen, and these other guys that
are injured. So that’s a redundant point.
Why have you not selected Michael
Hooper? Quade Cooper? Like, come
out and actually tell us as fans. Why
have you not picked these guys?
Because now, we’re seeing the result of
you not picking some of these guys.”
Injuries have deprived Australia of
Will Skelton, the captain and lock, and
Taniela Tupou, the tight-head prop.
The negativity continued with the
news that Jorgensen, the 19-year-old
back, had suffered an ankle injury and
was set to be ruled out of the tourna-
ment. Dylan Pietsch was set to replace
him but that has not been confirmed.
Jordan Uelese, the replacement
hooker, is out because of concussion
but Tate McDermott, the scrum half
and vice-captain, is set to return after
his 12-day stand-down. McDermott
said the Wallabies were accustomed to
not being fan favourites. “What we
have seen every game at this World Cup
is for some reason teams don’t like us,”
the 25-year-old said. “[The crowd] are
singing the Fijian songs, no doubt
they’ll be singing the Wales songs this
weekend. But we are embracing that.
We don’t mind that at all.”
Meanwhile, Wales continue to
prepare serenely in their Versailles
bubble, recently joined by family mem-
bers. Tommy Reffell is being assessed
for a calf injury and Henry Thomas has
a tight hamstring with Wales set to
name their team tomorrow.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 61

Sport
Sport

gets his chance Irish refuse to be

using him as a bench
full back since the
Ireland Test in August.
They were afforded
that opportunity when
Owen Farrell was
banned after a red
card the week before
against Wales. Smith
has embraced it fully.
The question is, can
England produce a
performance that gets
the best out of him?
Can Smith show that
he, Farrell and Ford
are all worth their
places in a match-day
23? And can he
demonstrate that
England can ill afford
to do without him
when they play Fiji,
Australia or Wales?
At the moment
Ford’s place is set. He
has scored 41 of
England’s 61 points in
France, and has been
their best player.
Farrell is the captain,
and is sure to play —
most likely at No 12
outside Ford.
So where does
Smith fit in? Is he an
option at full back,
from the bench, or
such as Bevan Rodd, rather than given a England is third choice behind starting? Even if this
Jack Walker, David genuine opportunity have Tom Curry and Ben should be a routine
Ribbans and Max to force their way into picked Earl now. However, for win, now is his chance
Malins — look to have the starting team for Smith, at Smith this does seem to show that his lively
been handed game the quarter-final. No 15, and to be a true chance to creativity is
time as a thank you Arundell could be in Arundell, show his worth. indispensable, while
for their hard work in that category too, as inset, to England have been having some fun along
months of training, could Jack Willis, who face Chile experimenting with the way.
cowed by beefed
up ‘bomb squad’
Alex Lowe Rugby is evolving rapidly towards
Rugby Correspondent, Tours multi-positional players. South Africa
have only one specialist hooker in their
Ireland will not blink in the face of squad and picked four scrum halves
South Africa’s decision to stack their because of the positional flexibility of-
bench with seven forwards for Satur- fered by Cobus Reinach and Grant
day’s World Cup showdown in Paris. Williams. France’s Sekou Macalou can
It was an alpha move from the play at wing, flanker and lock.
Springboks but Ireland are comfortable Jamison Gibson-Park, the Ireland
in their own skin and have no plans to scrum half, revealed he would be add-
change their established strategy just to ing a new string to his bow for next
accommodate an enhanced “bomb season. He has the potential to step in at
squad” on the bench. fly half in the same way Faf de Klerk has
Andy Farrell has selected a bench for South Africa, given the control that
split of five forwards and three backs in he already brings to a game when in the
every one of his 44 Tests as the Ireland Ireland No 9 jersey.
head coach. There is no intention to “Jamison has already told me that
change course now, even though the he’s going to be a bit more flexible next
prospect of seven fresh Springbok season for Leinster because he’s going
forwards entering the fray together to need to be able to cover more than
early in the second half will place a one position,” Easterby said.
premium on physicality. Ireland will be driven on by Johnny
Farrell will name the Ireland team on Sexton, their captain who used being
Thursday. Dan Sheehan, the hooker, overlooked by the British & Irish Lions
and Finlay Bealham, the prop, are in 2021 as motivating fuel for the
both available after injury. final chapter of his career. The
“Every team has a parti- 38-year-old overtook Ro-
cular strategy,” Simon South Africa nan O’Gara’s Ireland
Easterby, the Ireland points record against
assistant coach, said. v Ireland Tonga last weekend.
“They believe that’s the Pool B Warren Gatland, who
way they need to set coached the Lions in
themselves to beat us. Stade de France, Paris South Africa two years
We’ll be playing the way Saturday, 8pm ago, admitted that Sex-
we want to beat South TV: ITV ton’s form over the past
Africa. two years had proved that
“We haven’t tinkered with he made the wrong call. But it
that split before and there might be also gave Sexton the jolt he needed.
times we have to, but I’d say we’ll be Last November, he said the Lions
fairly conventional in what we do at the snub “still drives me to this day” but he
weekend in terms of the split. That’s has also acknowledged that it gave him
their decision and strategy to go with time to reset his goals and ask: “Do I
that. Ours will be slightly different. want to go out like this or do I want to
“We know that when we play well go out at the top?”
and a certain way that we’re going to be Gibson-Park plays alongside Sexton
difficult to play against. We’ll be looking for Leinster and Ireland. “It’s been awe-
to implement a lot of the stuff that you’ll some to witness really, the resilience
have seen over the past couple of years, he’s shown,” the scrum half said. “It was
as we have tried to do in the Tonga and a shock to all of us when he didn’t get
Romania games. selected for that Lions tour. Other guys,
“We haven’t had to win ugly maybe it might have knocked their confidence,
too many times. It would be great if we but he was amazing for Leinster.
could throw the ball around and score “He was great against Romania in the
plenty of tries, but we know that we opening game of the World Cup, his
have to do things in the moment and first game back after six months out
make sure we’re adaptable and that [because of injury and suspension]. It’s a
might mean playing certain ways in measure of the man, he’s a joy to play
certain parts of the game.” alongside.”

Italy finally find groove against dogged Uruguay

several defenders with him, for the Etcheverry landed a slightly wobbly
Italy
0
38
2
Italians’ third try in ten minutes at the
start of the second half, they were home
and hosed. Paolo Garbisi — making his
How they stand in pool A

Pani celebrates scoring the first of five
Italy tries against Uruguay in Nice
Uruguay
1
17
Mark Palmer Nice
The Italian national anthem, Brothers
of Italy, could hardly have been more
appropriate on a night when they
fielded two pairs of siblings in the
same team for the first time at a World
Cup.
Kieran Crowley’s side were, however,
far from on song in an opening 40 min-
utes during which Uruguay — so im-
pressive, so dogged against France as
well — dictated the flow of the contest
with their diligent defence and forward
power.
Yet when Lorenzo Cannone, one of
the pack brothers alongside his elder
sibling Niccolò, blasted over, dragging
first Test start at No 12 in a backline
which featured his younger brother
Alessandro — then played in Juan
Ignacio Brex for the coup de grâce.
For Uruguay, it was fun while it
lasted, but it is Italy who still nourish
hopes of progression — at least until
they run into the All Blacks and then
France.
The Azzurri had initially gone ahead
when Lorenzo Pani spun out of a tackle
and just about got the ball down before
losing control of it on the deck.
Uruguay passed up three kickable
penalties in the first half but the effer-
vescent South Americans still closed it
ahead after a frantic period which saw
Italy concede two tries and lose a
couple of players to the sin-bin.
Seconds after Niccolò Cannone re-
P W D L F A B Pts
Italy
France
New Zealand
2 2 0 0 90 25 2 10
2 2 0 0 54 25 0 8
2 1 0 1 84 30 1 5
Uruguay 2 0 0 2 29 65 0 0
Namibia 2 0 0 2 11 123 0 0
Today France v Namibia. Sep 27 Uruguay v
Namibia. Sep 29 New Zealand v Italy. Oct 5
New Zealand v Uruguay. Oct 6 France v Italy.
ceived a yellow card for a crude break-
down offence and Uruguay eked out a
penalty try when Danilo Fischetti
brought down another of their punish-
ing lineout drives as it neared comple-
tion. With Italy’s defensive shape in dis-
array, the Teros forwards hammered
away, making inch after precious inch
until space opened up to funnel the ball
out left to the winger Nicolás Freitas,
who touched down.
With the final kick of the half, Felipe
drop goal to send Uruguay in ten points
clear.
Not unsurprisingly, the Azzurri came
back out all guns blazing and benefitted
from a debatable yellow card awarded
against the Uruguay captain Andrés
Vilasca, when the inside centre went
to tackle Pani, the wing dropped
his height significantly and Vilasca
was deemed to have made head
contact.
Italy went to the corner and the
hooker Giacomo Nicotera rumbled
over from the back of a maul, only for
Angus Gardner, the referee, to rule him
held up. Not to be denied, Crowley’s
men kept coming and Lamaro soon
smashed his way across for a vital score.
When Monty Ioane put the seal on
another spell of concerted pressure
after Etcheverry was charged down, the
complexion of the game had irrevoca-
bly changed.
62
Sport Football
Matthew Syed
No limits to game’s tactical evolution
F
ootball evolution is speeding up. Go
back to the early days of the game and
you see rushing hordes of players
crowding the ball, focused almost
exclusively on dribbling. Fast-forward a
few decades and you glimpse “the passing
game”, then Herbert Chapman’s famous WM
(effectively 3-2-2-3) formation, then Hungary’s
iconic victory over England at Wembley in 1953,
built around the striker Nandor Hidegkuti
dropping deep to open up space for the other
forwards.
Move forward a little further and the
defensive catenaccio comes into view,
masterminded by Helenio Herrera at Inter
Milan, then Rinus Michels’s Total Football,
where players were coached to switch position
to open up space, particularly down the vertical
lines of the pitch. Then we had Barcelona’s
tiki-taka in the new century, the emphasis on
possession, the ball passed from the back by the
goalkeeper operating as a spare defender.
In some ways, this progression feels rather
like the famous March of Progress illustration by
the artist Rudolph F. Zallinger. You know the
one: different primate species progressing from
left to right, starting with a stooping chimp, then
a slightly more upright ape, then Homo erectus,
and finally, an anatomically modern human.
Although this picture is rightly condemned by
Darwinian theorists for depicting evolution as
linear and progressive (in truth, it is blind and
messy), it captured the imagination.
But while human biological evolution has
slowed down (at least according to some
academics), the evolution of football is
accelerating. Coaches who were once obsessed
with signing the “right” player to solve their
problems are now equally obsessed with finding
new ways to unlock space, create overloads or
block attacks. I spoke to a top coach recently
and he told me that much of his time was spent
perusing data hoping for tactical inspiration.
This is why things are changing so fast. I have
to confess that the first time I watched Pep
Guardiola’s Barcelona for a sustained period (I
followed the 2010-11 season almost from start to
finish), it felt like witnessing “The End of
History”. It wasn’t just the holy trinity of Xavi,
Lionel Messi and Andrés Iniesta but the
integration of an entire team into the moving of
Rinus Michels
1953-1992
Herbert Chapman Pep Guardiola
Managed: 1907-1933 2007-present
the ball around the pitch, side to side, back and superseded, almost feeling stale towards the end
forth, until — with a pass of stunning precision of his reign.
— the opposition were sliced open. Naively, I I don’t know about you, but I find this
didn’t think that football could get any better evolution thrilling. There is something
than this. mesmerising about the juxtaposition of the
Yet, all too soon, this approach was being simplicity of football — 22 players, one ball, two
splintered by opposition teams via determined teams — and the richness and complexity of the
counterattacking and the gegenpressing patterns it spawns. The pitch has scarcely
approach of Jürgen Klopp and others (the altered in its dimensions for a hundred years
football writer Brian Phillips called this “tiki- and yet the patterns adorning the canvas are as
taka on MDMA”). Klopp’s approach, in turn, has varied as the works of Pollock or Hockney.
been nullified by new innovations — a pattern Doesn’t this partly explain why every time
of measure and countermeasure that often football is taken to a new frontier — China, the
adorns evolutionary processes. Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa — it is
Arsenal fans will doubtless remember the embraced as the people’s art form?
exhilaration associated with the early years of I remember taking a trip to Tanzania a decade
Arsène Wenger. They will also remember the or so ago, travelling out through the Ruaha
dawning sense of dread as his approach was National Park to a village in the remote
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
hinterland, hundreds of miles off the electricity
grid. The first night, I huddled around a shack,
food cooked by naked fire, and slept in a dirt
building. The next morning, with the sun rising
with a blaze above the horizon, I walked to the
local school, a mile or so away. As I travelled
with my guide, I realised that I could hear a
strangely familiar noise: shouts, excitement,
hubbub.
We moved over the brow of a hill and beneath
us was a match taking place in a clearing, two
teams of 11 players, goals made of branches,
lines marked by hand. We sat down to watch the
contest, a 4-4-2 against a team playing a
midfield diamond. It was a wonderful match,
sumptuous passing, a kaleidoscope of
movement. After the match, I shook the hands
of the two coaches and we signalled with our
fingers the tactical formations and how they
had changed in the second half. We couldn’t
speak the same language but we were all
articulate in the grammar of football.
Perhaps all ambitious managers today are
looking for a new niche, calibrated according to
their own constraints. As the tactics guru
Jonathan Wilson wrote: “In football, the tactics
adopted must always be in relation to the ability
of the men on the side to carry them out
successfully.”
Just look at Brentford punching above their
weight with insights from the owner, Matthew
Benham, and the impressive head coach,
Thomas Frank. Brighton & Hove Albion are one
of the most exciting teams under Roberto De
Zerbi, a coach who started his playing career at
AC Milan. Hamzah Khalique-Loonat, my
colleague, wrote: “De Zerbi encourages and
dares opposing teams to press and baits them
with a player who stands with the ball, drawing
the team forward and creating space to play into
via a slick passing sequence.”
I have to confess that even a tactics
aficionado like me was somewhat flummoxed by
Mikel Arteta’s recent claim that he had used 36
structures against Fulham and 43 against
Manchester City. Was he ribbing us or perhaps
overcomplicating things? What seems certain is
that football will continue to evolve at
breakneck pace, continue to ravish us with its
capacity for change. It is why each season
always brings something unexpected.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 2GM 63

Football Sport

All non-3pm
matches in
top flight may
be live on TV
Martyn Ziegler Chief Sports Reporter
The Premier League will today propose
to its clubs an increase in the number of
matches shown live on TV by between
50 and 70 games a season.
The rise in televised matches from
the present figure of 200 out of 380
would come into force from the start of
the 2025-26 season and would mean
most, if not all, of the games that do not
kick off at 3pm on Saturday would be
broadcast live.
The 20 clubs will be given a presenta-
tion on the next auction of domestic
rights, which is due to be held this year,
and receive recommendations and
options for the packages. A vote is ex-
pected at another meeting next week.
The Premier League is also expected
to propose an increase in the length of
the next deal from three to four years. It
would need authorisation from the
broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, to do
so, but can point out that the top
leagues in Spain, Italy and France
already sell their domestic broadcast
rights in five-year packages. Germany
is about to do so as well.
It would be the first such sale for
nearly six years as the Premier League
was given special dispensation by the
government in 2021 to extend the deals
it had with Sky Sports, BT Sport (now
TNT Sports) and Amazon Prime
because of the pandemic.
Richard Masters, the Premier
League’s chief executive, confirmed last
month that it was looking at increasing
the number of games available to
broadcasters but ruled out scrapping
the Saturday 3pm TV blackout because
of the impact it could have on
match-day crowds and those playing
amateur football.
“We aren’t planning to change that,”
he said at the time. “We are still suppor-
tive of it for those historic reasons to
protect the 2.15 to 5.15 window to
protect participation and attendance,
and we think it still plays a role.
“I know people are frustrated they
can’t watch every game. We have
progressively put more matches into
our live packages and are at 200 now
and we are considering the volume of
matches for the auction.”
Excluding Saturday 3pm kick-offs,
Masters refused to rule out every match
being televised, saying: “We’re thinking
about it. There’s a process of deliberat-
ing over all of the issues that go into the
preparation to launch the auction.”
The Premier League clubs are also Iheanacho scored a penalty to set Leicester on their way to inflicting a first home defeat of the campaign upon Norwich
set to be told that a financial settlement
worth about £130-140 million extra a
year to the EFL is close to being
reached, though a vote is unlikely as
Leicester make it six from six on the road
there are still disagreements over new
spending controls. Norwich City may feel their defeat, a Norwich pressed for an equaliser
The settlement would mean the Pre-
mier League and EFL’s TV money is
pooled, with the EFL given a percent-
Norwich City
Scorer, 00 0 first at Carrow Road this season, was
unjust. Jack Stacey, scorer of Norwich’s
winner against Stoke City on Saturday,
without any clear chances emerging
until Onel Hernández, on for Fass-
nacht, used his pace to break free down
age. The deal would run over a number
of years and the percentage would vary
each year but would mean more than
Leicester City
Iheanacho 45 (pen), McAteer 87 2 forced Mads Hermansen into an early
save, while Leicester created little in the
opening half.
the right and send over a cross. Shane
Duffy got his head on it from three
yards out but Hermansen reacted bril-
£130 million extra annually for the 72 Sky Bet Championship However, in the 44th minute, the ref- liantly to paw it away. The Dane was at
Jon West
EFL clubs. The amount would also rise, eree, Graham Scott, awarded a penalty fault soon after, however, with a pass
or fall, depending on total TV income. Leicester City maintained their perfect when Christian Fassnacht clumsily straight to Kenny McLean that the Scot
Masters confirmed to a parliament- record on the road thanks to Kelechi shoved Stephy Mavididi to the ground, sent straight back over him only to see
ary committee in March that was the Iheanacho’s first-half penalty and a late having let the Leicester man race past the ball ping back off the bar.
proposed mechanism, saying: “Essen- strike from Kasey McAteer. him. Iheanacho casually lofted the McAteer wasted a chance to wrap up
tially, you put our media revenue and Enzo Maresca’s team, who moved resulting spot kick past Angus Gunn. victory, heading over at the back post,
the EFL’s media revenue in a pot, take above Ipswich Town to reclaim second There was time before the break for but made no mistake when the substi-
away costs and divide it on a place in the Sky Bet Championship, the pacey Mavididi, a summer signing tute, Jamie Vardy, found Kiernan
preordained formula, which means have now won all six of their away from Montpellier, to cut in from the left Dewsbury-Hall, who squared it to
that, going forward, our growth is the games in all competitions. and curl an effort marginally wide. McAteer for a simple tap-in.
EFL’s growth, and vice versa, so our
success is shared.”
As reported last week, the extra
money would be distributed according
to league position. Uefa’s new cost-
Chelsea set for £405m deal to fund new stadium
control model, under which clubs are Martyn Ziegler Chief Sports Reporter an agreement is imminent. Chelsea, for the 2021-22 season was £340.2mil-
restricted to spending only a fixed who are considering whether to rede- lion. “I think what we are trying to do is
percentage of their revenue on wages Chelsea are close to sealing a $500 mil- velop Stamford Bridge or move to a reduce the salary and essentially the
and transfers, would also be adopted. lion (£405 million) investment from the new site, were bought by Clearlake and opex [operating expenses] of the busi-
There is still disagreement over what American firm Ares Management to Todd Boehly for £2.5 billion from ness by over $100 million per year,” Feli-
that percentage is — sources say the help fund a new stadium while looking Roman Abramovich in May 2022 and ciano said.
Premier League clubs want it to be 85 to cut the amount they pay in player have spent more than any other “We have bought an asset that is very
per cent of revenue while the EFL salaries by tens of millions of pounds. English club on transfers since the take- coveted by many other potential buy-
favours 70 per cent, the same level as Talks with Ares, an alternative asset over but have struggled on the pitch. ers . . . the best way to make our club more
Uefa’s model — and how the parachute management company, have been Clearlake’s co-founder, José Feliciano, valuable is to win. The team had a tough
payments would work under the new going on for weeks, and reports by was quoted by the FT as saying that the first season, our first season, but we have
system. ESPN and the Financial Times (FT) say club needed to cut costs. The wage bill a tremendous amount of talent.”

Results
Group C Huddersfield (1) 2 Stoke (1) 2 Watford.................7 2 3 2 11 7 4 9 WTA Guadalajara Open AKRON WTA Galaxy Holding Group Open
Football Real Madrid (0) 1 Union Berlin (0) 0 Pearson 31 Johnson 33, West Bromwich..7 2 3 2 12 11 1 9 Second round C Giorgi (It) bt C Bucsa (Sp) 6-1, Guangzhou, China: Second round T Maria
Champions League: Group A Bellingham 90+4 65,207 Rudoni 68 Wilmot 62 Huddersfield........7 2 2 3 8 12 -4 8 6-2; E Arango (Col) bt S Stephens (US) 6-1, 6-2; (Ger) bt Zhuoxuan Bai (China) 6-1, 6-2; Wang
18,791 Coventry...............7 1 4 2 11 10 1 7 J Ostapenko (Lat) bt M Kostyuk (Ukr) 6-2 6-3; Xiyu (China) bt D Shnaider (Russ) 6-4, 7-5;
Bayern Munich (2) 4 Man United (0) 3 Sporting Braga (0) 1 Napoli (1) 2 Plymouth..............7 2 1 4 10 11 -1 7 M Sakkari (Gr) bt S Hunter (Aus) 6-2, 6-4; L Bronzetti (It) bt M Uchijima (Japan) 6-3, 6-3;
Sané 28, Gnabry 32 Hojlund 49 Hull (0) 0 Leeds (0) 0
Bruma 84 Di Lorenzo 45+1 Stoke.......................7 2 1 4 7 9 -2 7 E Navarro (US) bt M Keys (US) 6-2, M Linette (Pol) bt D Saville (Aus) 6-0, 7-6 (7-0);
Kane 53 (pen) Casemiro 88, 90+5 18,422 Niakate 88 (og) Sent off: J Rodon (Leeds) 60 QPR.........................7 2 1 4 7 12 -5 7 7-6 (7-5); O Jabeur (Tun) bt A Parks (US) 6-2, R Masarova (Sp) bt V Golubic (Switz) 6-1, 3-6,
Tel 90+2 75,000 Millwall (1) 3 Rotherham (0) 0 Rotherham...........7 1 1 5 7 16 -9 4 6-2. Third round C Garcia (Fr) bt H Baptiste 7-6 (9-7); G Minnen (Bel) bt H Dart (GB) 7-6
P W D L F A GD Pts
Galatasaray (0) 2 Copenhagen (1) 2 Napoli 1 1 0 0 2 1 1 3 Longman 27 12,563 Swansea................7 0 3 4 7 12 -5 3 (US) 7-5, 6-4; C Dolehide (US) bt E (9-7), 6-7 (7-5), 6-4; Y Putintseva (Kaz) bt C
Boey 86, Tetê 88 Elyounoussi 35 R Madrid 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 3 Flemming 58 Sheffield Wed......7 0 2 5 5 11 -6 2 Alexandrova (Russ) 6-1, 6-2; S Kenin (US) bt Tauson (Den) 3-6, 7-6 (7-5) ret; V Hruncakova
46,911 Cupido Gonçalves 58 Braga 1 0 0 1 1 2 -1 0 Bradshaw 90+3 Middlesbrough...7 0 2 5 5 14 -9 2 Ostapenko 6-4, 7-5. (Slova) bt Yuan Yue (China) 7-6 (7-5), 5-7, 6-4.
Sent off: E Jelert (Copenhagen) 73 Union Berlin 1 0 0 1 0 1 -1 0 Norwich (0) 0 Leicester (1) 2 Europa Conference League: Group A Lille 2
Group D Olimpija Ljubljana 0.
B Munich
P W D L F A GD Pts
1 1 0 0 4 3 1 3 Benfica (0) 0 RB Salzburg (1) 2
26,277 Iheanacho 45 (pen)
McAteer 87 Rugby union
Fixtures
Copenhagen 1 0 1 0 2 2 0 1 60,917 Simic 15 (pen)
Galatasaray 1 0 1 0 2 2 0 1 Watford (2) 2 West Brom (2) 2
Legia Warsaw v Aston Villa. Group G
Man Utd 1 0 0 1 3 4 -1 0
Gloukh 51
Sent off: A Silva (Benfica) 13
Ince 3, Martins 23 Swift 14 World Cup: Pool A Italy 38 Uruguay 17
(Allianz Riviera, Nice).
Football Eintracht Frankfurt v Aberdeen.
16,742 Wallace 17
Kick-off 5.45 unless stated
Group B Real Sociedad (1) 1 Inter Milan (0) 1 P W D L F A GD Pts
6 Table on page 61
Europa League: Group A (8.0): Olympiacos v
Cricket
Arsenal (3) 4 PSV (0) 0 Méndez 4 Martínez 87
Saka 8, Trossard 20 58,860 36,591
Preston..................7
Leicester................7
6
6
1 0 12 5 7 19
0 1 13 5 8 18
Tennis Freiburg; West Ham United v Backa Topola. LV= County Championship: Third day of four
(10.30): Division One: Chelmsford Essex v
Group B (8.0): Ajax v Marseille; Brighton v
Jesus 38 Sent off: N Barella (Inter Milan) 65 Ipswich...................7 6 0 1 13 7 6 18 ATP Chengdu Open AEK Athens. Group C (8.0): Rangers v Hampshire. Emirates Old Trafford
Odegaard 70 P W D L F A GD Pts Sunderland...........7 4 1 2 15 7 8 13 Chengdu, China: First round T Daniel Real Betis; Sparta Prague v Aris Limassol. Lancashire v Nottinghamshire. Lord’s
Sevilla (1) 1 Lens (1) 1 RB Salzburg 1 1 0 0 2 0 2 3 Norwich.................7 4 1 2 15 10 5 13 (Japan) bt A Vukic (Aus) 4-6, 6-4, 6-2; R Group D (8.0): Atalanta v Rakow Middlesex v Warwickshire. Taunton Somerset
Inter Milan 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 Hull..........................7 3 3 1 10 7 3 12 Safiullin (Russ) bt B Nakashima (US) 6-4, 6-4; Czestochowa; Sturm Graz v Sporting. v Kent. Kia Oval Surrey v Northamptonshire.
Ocampos 9 Fulgini 24 R Sociedad 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 Bristol City............7 3 3 1 9 6 3 12 Division Two: Derby Derbyshire v Sussex.
33,544 C Moutet (Fr) bt Mu Tao (China) 6-2, 6-2. Group E LASK Linz v Liverpool; Union Saint
Benfica 1 0 0 1 0 2 -2 0 Birmingham.........7 3 2 2 8 7 1 11 Gilloise v Toulouse. Group F Panathinaikos v Leicester Leicestershire v Yorkshire.
P W D L F A GD Pts Leeds......................7 2 4 1 10 7 3 10 ATP Zhuhai Championships Villarreal; Rennes v Maccabi Haifa. Group G Worcester Worcestershire v Durham.
Sky Bet Championship
Arsenal 1 1 0 0 4 0 4 3 Cardiff....................7 3 1 3 13 12 1 10 Zhuhai, China: First round L Harris (SA) bt Servette v Slavia Prague; Sheriff v Roma.
Lens 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 Blackburn (1) 1 Sunderland (2) 3 Millwall .................. 7 3 1 3 7 8 -1 10 J Vesely (Cz) 6-4, 6-2; Y Nishioka (Japan) bt Group H Bayer Leverkusen v Hacken (5.45); Rugby union
Sevilla 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 Leonard 35 Clarke 28 (pen) Blackburn ............. 7 3 1 3 9 12 -3 10 T Atmane (Fr) 0-6, 6-4, 6-2; D Svrcina (Cz) bt Qarabag v Molde. World Cup: Pool A France v Namibia (8.0, at
PSV 1 0 0 1 0 4 -4 0 15,621 Neil 45+1, Clarke 78 Southampton......7 3 1 3 11 17 -6 10 Li Zhe (China) 6-4, 6-3. Europa Conference League (5.45): Group E Stade Velodrome, Marseille).
64
Sport Football
‘It’s an eccentric, weird and wonderful
city – all those things are in our club’
Gregor Robertson tells
the remarkable story of
Brighton’s ascent
from League Two
to Europa League
‘The big clubs can buy our players, but
they can’t buy our soul and spirit” —
Roberto De Zerbi, August 11, 2023.
There are three pillars of the Brigh-
ton & Hove Albion story that make
their rise so engaging and appealing.
First, there is the football: thrilling, in-
novative, incisive and, since De Zerbi’s
arrival as head coach 12 months ago,
fearless.
Second, the ownership: Tony Bloom, a
poker-playing entrepreneur who made
his millions in property and the gam-
bling business, whose intelligent stew-
ardship and recruitment model are the
envy of every other club in the country.
The third, however, and the thing
that perhaps imbues a club with
their “spirit and soul”, is the
journey: Brighton really
should not be here, challenging
the Premier League elite, and,
as AEK Athens visit the Amex
Stadium tonight, embarking
upon the first European cam-
paign in their 122-year history.
Yet here they are. “All of those
things are inexorably liked,” the
DJ, supporter and minority
shareholder Norman Cook (aka
Fatboy Slim) says. “Sometimes,
when they get the rhythm of
their passing, it’s like listening to
a piece of classical music — it
takes you places.
“But we’re also playing this
beautiful football because of our owner,
and his vision, and the way he’s struc-
tured the club. The passion and spirit is
because we had to fight for our survival.
We feel we’ve earned this, because we
suffered. Some clubs have a sense of
entitlement; we’re the opposite. We
came from nowt. And most of us still
remember the bad days.”
Brighton kick off their European ad-
venture with a sense, as Bloom recently
said, that there is “no ceiling” for them
this season. Yet not all that long ago the
club’s supporters didn’t have a roof
above their heads as they endured
defeats by Yeovil Town and Port Vale at
the Withdean Stadium.
There is a reason many Brighton fans
still refer to the period between 1995
and 2011 as the “war years” — and that
is because they were confronted with
not one, nor two, but three battles for
their club’s survival.
Alan Wares, co-host of the Albion
Roar radio show and podcast, can still
remember the day the local paper, The
Argus, revealed that the club’s home of
96 years, the Goldstone Ground, had
been sold. “I think the headline was
‘Seagulls to Migrate’, or some other
cheesy seagull-related line you always
get with Albion,” Ware says.
“The club had been on its uppers for
the previous ten or 15 years. So you
thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting, some-
one’s doing something about it.’ Then
you realised the ground had been sold,
not the club itself, and we were going to
Portsmouth. It didn’t take long at all to
realise we were being hoodwinked.”
The first battle, therefore, was to
remove the club’s controversial owners,
Greg Stanley and Bill Archer, and in-
stall a consortium led by the local Albi-
Brighton played at the Withdean for 12
years; above, Bloom, right, with chief
executive Paul Barber; below, fan and
shareholder Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook
on-supporting businessman Dick
Knight. In 1997, a draw away to Here-
ford United saved Brighton’s Football
League status at the expense of their
hosts on the final day of the season.
Then, after the ignominy of having to
ground-share, not with Portsmouth but
with Gillingham, 75 miles north, the
“Bring Home the Albion” campaign
returned the club to the city, at the
Withdean, an athletics stadium with a
6,000 capacity and only one roofed
stand, pending the construction of a
new stadium.
No one knew that the Withdean
would be home for 12 years, of course,
and so the concerted campaign to gain
permission, from local and national
government, to construct a new home
in Falmer was arguably the most
remarkable feat of all.
Throughout it all, supporters
organised marches, pitch invasions,
boycotts, petitions, a referendum, the
formation of a political party and even
a top-20 single — all delivered with a
blend of humour and creativity.
“We delivered an enormous Valen-
tine’s card to John Prescott [then the
deputy prime minister, whose office
had responsibility for planning deci-
sions at the time, and who gave the sta-
dium at Falmer the go-ahead], with the
message: ‘Roses are red, violets are
blue, our new stadium is all down to
you,’ ” Paul Samrah, a chartered ac-
countant and campaign leader, recalls.
“We had 90 bouquets of flowers, with
messages from every club, delivered to
his office. It was fun, but very fo-
cused.”
John Baine, a “punk poet and
musician” better known by his
stage name, Attila the Stock-
broker, was another who spear-
headed the campaign. “When I
saw the way that everyone
gathered round, the level of
support, the level of intelli-
gence and creativity, I always
felt we’d come back stronger,”
Baine, whose song Tom Hark
(We Want Falmer) reached
No 17 in 2005, says.
Baine’s poem, Goldstone Ghost, which
adorns a wall in Dick’s Bar behind the
North Stand at the Amex, backs up that
claim: “And one day, when our new
home’s built, and we are storming back/
A bunch of happy fans without a care/
We’ll look back on our darkest hour and
raise our glasses high and say with satis-
faction: we were there.”
“It has all been organic,” Baine says.
“All Brighton fans. No sportswashers.
No hedge funds. No oligarchs. Just
clever people and lots of fans working
together. And Tony Bloom is as big a
Brighton fan as any of us.”
As a result, Wares says, a sense of
ownership among the fanbase endures.
“We have this notion that we built Falm-
er stadium, albeit with Tony Bloom’s
money,” he says. “Brighton, the city, is a
series of communities — interlinked
communities. Geography, status, gen-
der, ethnicity — there are a whole series
of communities who live together in a
way that not every town or city have.”
Bella Sankey, the Brighton & Hove
City Council leader, agrees. “The
club’s story is a bit like the story of
our city,” Sankey says. “A lot of
what they now represent, the
success they’ve achieved, the way
they’ve achieved it, the ethos of the
club, I think that reflects the
city that we are.
“Brighton is an eccen-
tric place, a weird and
wonderful place; a
place that has al-
ways been a bit of
a beacon,
because of the
trailblazing things
we’ve done. Go
and look at the
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
Brighton v
AEK Athens
Europa League, group B
Tonight, kick-off 8pm
TV: TNT Sports 1
Royal Pavilion. Not many places have a
royal palace like that in their city.”
In celebration of their achievement,
the club are to be awarded the Freedom
of the City at a special council meeting
at Brighton Town Hall in November.
The Lanes, the labyrinthine warren of
alleyways filled with quirky shops, bars
and cafes, have been decked out with
blue and white bunting. The lavish
Royal Pavilion — “where the nefarious
antics of the Prince Regent” imbued “a
certain amount of character that’s
stayed with the city”, Cook believes —
will be illuminated in blue and white on
Thursday night, and before every Euro-
pean home game.
The club’s relationship with the city,
Cook says, has been transformed.
“Before the Tony Bloom era, we weren’t
a footballing city,” says the 60-year-old,
who first went to the Goldstone with a
college flat-mate in the 1980s before in-
vesting money to keep them afloat. “It
was Tony Bloom’s dream to change
that. I remember sitting in a meeting
with him, when we were talking about
building the Amex. He was saying 25-
30,000 [capacity] — and at that point
we were getting gates of 4,500 at the
Withdean. I was like, ‘I think you’re
overestimating the appetite for football
in this city.’ His attitude was, ‘If you
build it, they will come.’ ”
Bloom was right. A sell-out 32,000
crowd will see the 13-times champions
of Greece visit the stadium that Brigh-
ton supporters fought so hard to make
theirs. The French and Dutch giants
Marseille and Ajax will soon visit Suss-
ex by the Sea.
The journey, however, will never
be forgotten. “The game at Here-
ford [in 1997], to stay 91st rather
than 92nd in the Football
League . . . if we do the Quadruple,
my happiest day as a supporter will
still always be the 1-1 draw at
Hereford, because that
day was the beginning of
the fightback,” Baine
says. “I knew that
when we came
back, we would
soar back. But I
have to admit, I
never thought
it would be this
good.”
European previews
LASK v Liverpool
5.45pm
Europa League, group E
TV: TNT Sports 1
What they are saying
Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp:
“We want to go as far as possible. I
would love to go to the final,
obviously, but I have no clue if you
can reach that because there will be
a lot of fantastic football teams in
between us and that target. So we
have to make sure we perform.”
Team news
Trent Alexander-Arnold will be
missing again with a hamstring
problem, although he should be
back for Liverpool’s game with West
Ham United on Sunday. Thiago
Alcântara is also set to miss out.
Brighton & Hove Albion v AEK
Athens, 8pm
Europa League, group B
TV: TNT Sports 1
What they are saying
Brighton head coach Roberto De
Zerbi: “It is an honour to play in this
competition for us, but when the
game starts we have to forget
everything and to be focused only
on the result.”
Team news
All the players rested for the 3-1
victory away to Manchester United
on Saturday are fit, but Lewis Dunk
was not seen at training.
West Ham United v FK TSC
Backa Topola, 8pm
Europa League, group A
TV: TNT Sports 2
What they are saying
West Ham manager David Moyes:
“I’ve got to say there’s an inner glow
about me because I know getting
that victory [winning the
Conference League] last season
meant so much. I hope we can do it
again, I really do.”
Team news
New midfielder Edson Álvarez is
unavailable due to a suspension
carried over from last season.
Lukasz Fabianski will start in goal.
Legia Warsaw v Aston Villa
5.45pm
Europa Conference League, group E
TV: TNT Sports 2
What they are saying
For much of Villa’s team European
football is a new experience. The full
back, Matty Cash, is excepting a
hostile reception in Poland. “I’ve
never faced it before but I’m
guessing it can be quite intimidating
when you go to places like that.
We’ve got a great manager with
loads of experience in these types
of ties. He always keeps us calm.”
Team news
Jacob Ramsey is training again after
breaking a foot over the summer
while defender Diego Carlos is still
sidelined with a hamstring injury.
Ezri Konsa, who has signed a new
five-year deal, is available.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 2GM 65

Champions League Sport

Saka wastes no time in starting party

integrating into the team. The
Arsenal
Saka 8, Trossard 20, Jesus 38, Odegaard 70 4 Germany attacker came on as a late
substitute against Everton and, it has to
be said, few onlookers missed his
PSV
0 presence. Part of the attraction of
Havertz is that he scored the winning
Alyson Rudd goal for Chelsea in the 2021

There is probably no better way to

prepare for a heated north London
derby than by virtually strolling to
victory in your opening match in the
Champions League. Yes, Tottenham
Hotspur are firing and brimming with
optimism but Arsenal will take to the
pitch on Sunday with the aura of having
competed suavely in a competition
Spurs failed to reach last season.
It is six years since Mikel Arteta’s
team competed at this level in Europe
but absence clearly made the heart
grow fonder rather than out of touch
with what would be required against
opposition who, while outclassed on
the night, will still be hopeful of finish-
ing runners-up in the group.
They have cranked up the atmos-
phere here for Premier League games,
but last night they held the raucousness
in check until the opening notes of the
Champions League anthem. “Every-
one was getting a bit emotional before
it,” Arteta said. “We rode that energy
and emotion in the right way. It was a
beautiful night after such a long
time. It was great to see the atmos-
phere and the Champions
League music.”
No detail is too small
these days at the Emir-
ates and so the lyrics to
the now famous anthem
were printed, albeit in very
small type, in the match pro-
gramme. It was a sweet touch
but perhaps insufficiently excit-
ing to stop the fans wondering
why Aaron Ramsdale had been
dropped for two successive
games in favour of David Raya,
who arrived in the summer
from Brentford. It now remains
to be seen if Raya is considered,
by his manager, to be the No 1
Trossard enjoys his second
goal in as many games
50
Jesus has scored in 50
Champions League final, and
perhaps Arteta hoped that he
would sparkle last night upon
hearing that music.
per cent of his
Champions League starts, He fired one effort over the
the eighth-highest rate of bar in the first half but, over-
any player in the all, continues to appear
competition’s history slightly lost and unsure of his
(minimum 20 role, although with a dinked
starts) pass he did set up Jesus for a
chance that was wasted and his
occasional lay-offs were intelligent and
applauded by the crowd.
Jesus should also have scored from a
beautifully clipped ball from Odegaard
but hesitated too long. At the other end,
Raya continued to look accomplished
and as comfortable as if he had been at
the club for years.
Arteta began making substitutions
with Sunday in mind early in the
second half. Concerned that Gabriel
Martinelli will still be sidelined with a
hamstring issue, the manager brought
off the excellent Trossard and, just as
Odegaard, left, the Arsenal captain and scorer of the home side’s fourth, celebrates with, from right, Jesus, Saka and Rice the second period was in danger of
becoming soporific, William Saliba
goalkeeper or whether there will be a had so little to do on Sunday against Jesus sprinting towards him, the PSV danced his way out of defence as if audi-
period of rotation. Ramsdale was Everton that this almost felt like his real ’keeper, affected by the wet conditions, tioning for Strictly. The fans also greatly
integral to the club securing debut. scrambled to prevent a copycat goal. A appreciated the arrival off the bench of
Champions League foot- The start was jittery from both teams few moments later, though, the home the popular Emile Smith Rowe, who
ball and would have but the home side settled quickest and team broke with alacrity and Saka has been sidelined so far this campaign.
hoped to feature in were rewarded with a goal. A strike bided his time with the final pass to an The fourth goal was scored by the
what was an emo- from Martin Odegaard, who played a unmarked Leandro Trossard, who ever-so-elegant Odegaard from just
tional evening. On the Champions League qualifying game as calmly placed his studied strike beyond outside the area and, by the end, even
other hand, players who young as 15, for Stromsgodset, was par- the increasingly frustrated Benítez. the PSV players seemed to be thinking
help their team win promo- ried weakly by Walter Benítez into the To their credit, Peter Bosz’s team’s more about the north London derby.
tion are often jettisoned the path of Bukayo Saka, who appeared shoulders did not droop for long and
next season. There is no room slightly surprised by how easily the Noa Lang embarked on a promising
for sentiment at the elite level. chance had been created but still run that resulted in a decent cross, dealt Arsenal (4-3-3): D Raya 8 — O Zinchenko 7
Raya immediately ventured finished with ease. with adroitly by Raya, and the visitors (T Tomiyasu 58min, 6), W Saliba 8, Gabriel 7,
B White 7 — M Odegaard 8, D Rice 7 (Jorginho
high up the pitch, as if to European games can often be cagey forced a couple of reasonably danger- 76), K Havertz 6 — B Saka 7 (F Vieira 69, 7),
advertise that he is the more affairs but this was a scurrying, ambi- ous corner kicks. Still, the third Arsenal G Jesus 7 (E Smith Rowe 69, 6) , L Trossard 8
adventurous goalkeeper. All tious contest and PSV Eindhoven were goal arrived far too easily. Trossard (R Nelson 58). Booked White.
the same, when Raya plucked notably uninhibited, buoyed by the fact looped the ball from left to right across PSV Eindhoven (4-2-3-1): W Benitez 4 — J Teze 6,
A Bella-Kotchap 6 (Ramalho Silva 76), O Boscagli
the ball out of the air midway they had faced Arsenal in the Europa the penalty area and Jesus had time to 6, S Dest 5 — J Schouten 5, J Veerman 5 —
through the first half, from a League last season and defeated them, take a touch and pick his spot. J Bakayoko 5 (H Lozano 66, 5), I Saibari 6
cross by Jordan Teze, the even if only on home soil. The dropping of Ramsdale has (M Tillman 66, 5), N Lang 6 (Y Vertessen 77)
— L de Jong 6 (R Pepi, 90). Booked Boscagli,
home fans cheered with a Another Odegaard shot was fumbled served to deflect attention away from Tillman, Schouten.
degree of relief. Raya had by Benítez but this time, with Gabriel quite how well, or poorly, Kai Havertz is Referee F Zwayer (Ger)

Bellingham breaches Spain end strike

Berlin wall at the last
Real Madrid
Bellingham 90+4
Union Berlin
Ian Hawkey Madrid
Six games in, six wins and six goals now
for Jude Bellingham, the Englishman
who makes dream debuts a matter of
routine. Having scored in his first La
Liga match for Real Madrid, then on his
introductory night at the Bernabéu, he
soothed what had become a frustrating
opening Champions League group C
game with a late winner for his new club
against Union Berlin. “We must be
careful not to deify him,” the Real
defender Dani Carvajal said of Belling-
ham only last week. Carvajal may find
that horse has now truly bolted.
Bellingham’s goal broke an exasper-
ating impasse, scored four minutes into
stoppage time to capture the points and
spare Real a chastening setback against
a team who are newcomers, freshmen
in the Champions League.
In the growing portfolio of Belling-
1 ham’s Real goals, this one will belong in
the “poacher” class. The England
midfielder was expertly placed to capi-
0 talise on a ricochet after a Federico
Valverde drive had been beaten out.
“He has the quality, which is impor-
tant, and a bit of luck, but you have to be
in the right place, like he was here and
for his goal against Getafe [on his Ber-
nabéu debut],” Carlo Ancelotti, the Real
head coach, said. “When he attacks
from just behind the strikers, he’s clever,
and he’s taking advantage of that skill.”
These poached goals are essential.
Real are short-staffed for orthodox
centre forwards. Bellingham, operating
at the apex of midfield, is being asked to
make up the gap. He keeps answering
the call.
It felt heartbreaking for Union, the
club who in five years have come up
from the second tier of German football
into the Champions League. They be-
lieved they had been stubborn enough
to leave the Bernabéu with a point, a
feather in their caps not for any flourish
in their game but for their resistance.
Bellingham shows his poacher’s instinct to score from close range in added time
They had come to this daunting
theatre concerned enough about their
shortage of pedigree in this company
that their newest signing, Leonardo
Bonucci, had been thrust straight into
the line-up to make his Union debut.
Bonucci, with more than a century of
Uefa competition matches to his name
for Italian clubs, spent most of the
summer in a spiteful stand-off with Ju-
ventus. He was thoroughly enjoying his
return to action until Bellingham
played spoilsport.
Bonucci’s headed clearance, close to
the goalline early in the second half,
was one of a pair of clenched-fist mo-
ments for the Italy defender. Alongside
him, Diogo Leite made authoritative
interventions.
Real were better in the second half, or
at least closer to cracking this Berlin
wall. Rodrygo volleyed powerfully
against a post, Joselu’s header came
back off the frame of the goal, and Fred-
erik Ronnow tipped a fierce Modric
drive over the bar.
The clear frustration of Joselu, after
hooking an excellent Bellingham cross
wide with seven minutes remaining,
spoke for all his colleagues. The relief at
Bellingham’s winner filled all but a
small corner of the Bernabéu.
after crisis talks
Molly Hudson
Most of the Spain women’s team have
agreed to end their strike and will play
in Friday’s Uefa Nations League fixture
against Sweden.
Players, staff, federation officials and
union representatives were locked in
talks for seven hours, eventually reach-
ing an agreement at 5am yesterday.
Two of the 23-player squad have cho-
sen to pull out: Mapi León and Patri Gu-
ijarro, who began their boycott last year
and did not play at the World Cup.
Victor Francos, the Spanish secre-
tary of state for sports, said the RFEF
had committed to “immediate and pro-
found changes” to the organisation.
The strike action was put aside for the
recent World Cup, which Spain won,
beating England 1-0 in the final.
Luis Rubiales, then the RFEF presi-
dent, kissed Jenni Hermoso, the striker,
on the lips during the medal presenta-
tion. The kiss, which Hermoso said she
did not consent to, caused global con-
demnation and Rubiales was forced to
resign. Jorge Vilda, the head coach and
an ally of Rubiales, was sacked and An-
dreu Camps, the federation’s secretary
general, has also been dismissed.
66
Sport Champions League
Onana’s shocker
sets tone – brittle
United are a mess
Henry Winter
Chief Football
Writer, Munich
Bayern Munich
Sané 28, Gnabry 32, Kane 53 (pen), Tel 90+2
Man United
Hojlund 49, Casemiro 88, 90+5
There was some fight from Manchester
United towards the end, and flickering
hope of partying like it was 1999 against
Bayern Munich, but the scoreline lies.
United were really never this close to
Bayern.
United’s ragged defence was opened
up so many times that the German
champions should have won by far
more. They scored four, hit the post
twice, and were denied four times by
André Onana, the United keeper, who
endured such embarrassment in the
first half when gifting Bayern the lead.
There were so many worrying
elements to this deserved defeat for
United, including a five-minute period
in the first half when they went to
pieces, conceding twice, and a passage
of play in the second when they
seemed to replace running with walk-
ing. Also damning was that Bayern
hardly needed to be anywhere near
their best.
The positives? They refused to give
up. The fans stayed with them. Rasmus
Hojlund not only ran himself into the
ground as the lone striker for 79
minutes but showed admirably deft
footwork for his goal, controlling the
ball with his right and finishing with his
left.
The unlikely sight of Casemiro twice
playing the poacher late on still could
not mask the reality that Bayern played
past him far too easily. Christian Erik-
sen faded and was replaced. Sofyan
Amrabat and Mason Mount cannot get
fit soon enough.
The negatives? Where to start?
United’s confidence looks brittle,
and disappeared after Onana’s
howler. Bruno Fernandes
brings some urgency, as well as
creativity, as an attacking
midfield player, but on
this evidence you would
definitely take Jamal
Musiala, only 20 and
bursting with energy
and talent, ahead of the
United captain. Fer-
nandes also gave the
ball away for Bayern’s
decisive fourth and his
competitive edge is
tempered by his deter-
mination to debate
decisions at length with
officials. When United
needed calm leadership
they got anger.
United’s defence was good
last season but is now so
open, and the channels have
become autobahns which
Musiala was creative and
elusive in attack for Bayern
2GM Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
4
3
Onana lets Sané’s shot slip through to give Bayern the lead. United had made a
decent start but after the goalkeeper’s error their confidence drained away
Musiala, Leroy Sané and Serge Gnabry to console Onana but he knew the scale
tore down. of his blunder.
Erik ten Hag is making constant run- His saves, as well as his ability in pos-
ning repairs on his side. He responded to session, had helped Inter Milan to last
the continued absence of Antony and season’s final of the Champions League,
Jadon Sancho by eschewing the dia- and he made a fine, near-post save from
mond, returning to 4-2-3-1, and Manchester City’s Erling Haaland in
United did look better balanced, Istanbul, but there had been in-
albeit still vulnerable. The creasing concerns about his
20-year-old Uruguayan
Facundo Pellistri arrived
on the right for only his
second start and was
45
Years since United
shot-stopping at United.
Onana was even asked
about it on the eve of this
game, and he replied
neat and nimble, and previously conceded 3+ that he was good with
worked hard against goals in three consecutive his feet but “first I have to
Alphonso Davies, but is games (December 1978 save the goals, that’s why
not elite level yet. under Dave Sexton) I’m here”. Well, he wasn’t
History weighs heavily
on this team of Ten Hag’s.
Before kick-off, Paul Scho-
there for United when
required after 28 minutes.
United’s confidence and con-
restored their two-goal edge within
four minutes. The award of the penalty
seemed harsh as Eriksen could hardly Good luck
les strode towards his pun-
ditry station pitchside,
joining Rio Ferdinand, 14 centration drained away.
who looks at his old Goals conceded by United charged down the
Then came that dam-
aging second. Musiala
have got out of the way when Upame-
cano headed at him from close range.
VAR eventually suggested to Nyberg
that he check the monitor and the
Sparkling attacking
fighting weight. Peter
Schmeichel marched
in all competitions so far inside-left channel,
tracked by Dalot, and
Swede signalled a penalty. Fernandes
complained again but Kane swept his
quartet showed why
this season, two more
past, looking ready to than the next-worst when he stopped and cut kick emphatically past Onana. Bayern fans believe
defy Germans again. Roy Premier League inside, the United right- United looked listless, resigned to
Keane’s name was on the team back could not cope. their fate. Ten Hag tried to shake them this will be their year,
lips of the travelling choirs Musiala angled the ball back awake but his options were limited. He
outside the Irish pub round the to Gnabry who was given far too sent on Scott McTominay for Eriksen. writes Paul Hirst
back of Marienplatz. much space. Eriksen took too long to But United remained on the back foot.
T
This personification of the high get back, Casemiro and Victor Lindelof Onana did make partial amends with his Sunday, one of the great
standards of the were too static, and Onana had no saves from Sané and Eric Maxim Bayern Munich traditions
Sir Alex Ferguson chance with Gnabry’s low shot. Choupo-Moting twice. will take place. Harry Kane
era reminded Ten Glenn Nyberg blew for half-time United briefly stirred hope of a and his team-mates will don
Hag’s side of the levels they must with Marcus Rashford trying to get famous fightback when Anthony their lederhosen and head
aspire to, and they failed again here. down the flank. Rashford left the ball Martial somehow managed to ease the down to the Theresienwiese area of
They lack their predecessors’ fighting just in from the touchline, and Scholes ball through to Casemiro, who despite the city to join the revellers of
spirit. The United supporters, high dragged it towards him, like an old being off-balance, squeezed his shot in. Oktoberfest.
up in the gods, sang “we’ve seen it all” friend, when reappearing to deliver his But then Fernandes lost the ball, What odds that Kane and co will be
in a tribute to their glorious history interval views for the cameras. He even Bayern countered and the substitute raising a glass with their fans in early
but they cannot have seen much like had a brief kickabout with Ferdinand Mathys Tel thundered the ball into the June after winning the Champions
what unfolded between the 28th before the fourth official dashed over to roof of United’s net. League final at Wembley?Judging by
and 32nd minutes here. United reclaim the ball and spoil the fun. Casemiro made it 4-3 with a header the performance from their attack last
had actually started promisingly, Ten Hag sent United out early for the from a Fernandes free kick, giving the night, the odds should be pretty short.
and Eriksen’s low shot was push- second half, they formed a huddle and scoreline a gloss it did not deserve. The addition of Kane has made
ed away by Sven Ulreich, Bay- began well, pulling a goal back within Bayern even stronger, but the support
ern’s keeper. four minutes. Fernandes was quickest cast behind him are equally lethal.
Bayern Munich (4-2-3-1): S Ulreich 6 — K Laimer 7,
But all the focus was soon on to a loose ball, touching it left to D Upamecano 7, K-M Jae 6, A Davies 7 — J
In terms of attacking threat, Serge
Onana. Dayot Upamecano set Casemiro. The Brazilian slid the ball Kimmich 8, L Goretzka — L Sané 7 (M Tel 87min), Gnabry, Jamal Musiala and Leroy
Sané on his way, and the former down the inside-left channel to J Musiala 9 (E Choupo-Moting 75), S Gnabry 7 (K Sané are, on their day, up there with
City winger played a one-two with Rashford, who teed up Hojlund. The Coman 63, 6) — H Kane 7 (T Müller 87). Booked the best in Europe. They all have links
Goretzka.
Harry Kane, and then shot hard Dane’s first goal for United deflected in Manchester United (4-2-3-1): A Onana 5 — D Dalot to England, of course. Gnabry spent
but straight at Onana. The ball past Ulreich. 5, V Lindelof 5, L Martínez 5, S Reguilón 6 — four years at Arsenal. Sané became a
disappeared under his body, and Bayern, for whom Kane looks like he Casemiro 6, C Eriksen 5 (S McTominay 69, 6) — F fans’ favourite at Manchester City.
Pellistri 5 (A Garnacho 81), B Fernandes 6, M
settled accusingly in the net. Sergio has been there for years, simply took Rashford 6 — R Hojlund 6 (A Martial 81). Booked
Musiala represented England at
Reguilón and Lisandro Martinez tried United’s goal in their stride and Martínez. Referee G Nyberg (Swe) youth level after moving to London
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
silencing Kane and co
from Germany at a young age, and
played in Chelsea’s academy.
Now fully established stars in their
own right, each of them has pace,
technical ability and an eye for goal.
Last night we got a glimpse of how
Thomas Tuchel, the Bayern head
coach, intends to use his front four.
Kane seemed to have most of his
touches in his own half in the first 45
minutes. He dropped deep, playing
just in front of Leon Goretzka and
Kimmich.
The idea was to let Gnabry, who
started on the left, Musiala, the No 10,
and Sané, deployed on the right, to
use their pace to trouble United’s
defence, and after a slightly stodgy
start the tactic started to work.
One felt for Sergio Reguilón. A few
weeks ago he was Tottenham
Hotspur’s third-choice left back. Last
night he had to deal with Sané, who
was like a coiled spring.
Sané would wait patiently, standing
on his tiptoes running across the line
awaiting a pass from Konrad Laimer,
then off he went, pedalling through
the gears at incredible speed.
His goal owed much to good
fortune — André Onana should have
saved his shot — but his statistics
demonstrate just how deadly he is.
The former City winger has four goals
in six matches this season.
Gnabry was just as effective on the
2GM
left wing. For Bayern’s second, he
sprinted into the penalty area to roll
the ball past Onana after Musiala had
entered the area at pace.
Sané, Gnabry and Musiala were not
strictly pegged to their starting
positions, which added to the chaos.
Musiala made several runs down the
left, Sané cut across the pitch from
right to left at one stage in the first
half, taking United players with him.
Quite often, Musiala, who is only
20, would join Kane in midfield
during the first phase of Bayern’s
attack, allowing them to have
numerical superiority in midfield.
All the running backwards had
taken its toll on United’s centre halves
and defensive midfielders by the
second half. Victor Lindelof and
Lisandro Martínez gasped for air
during a break in play after Gnabry
had run at them for the umpteenth
time. There was to be no respite
though. When the fourth official held
up Gnabry’s number in the 63rd
minute, the man coming on to replace
him was Kingsley Coman, who is no
slouch.
Müller and the next big thing,
Mathys Tel, were also on the bench
last night for Tuchel. With such a
plethora of devastating attacking
options in his squad, it is easy to see
why Bayern fans think this could be
their year.
Ten Hag: Goals were soft –
we need to look in mirror
continued from back
situation for me, I let the team down. It’s
because of me we didn’t win this game.
“We have to move on, it’s the life of
the goalkeeper.
“Their first shot on target, I made the
mistake and the team went down. We
fought until the end but I have to recog-
nise that we didn’t win because of me.”
Onana, who joined United from
Inter Milan for £47 million in the sum-
mer, also came in for criticism for his
performances against Brighton & Hove
Albion and Nottingham Forest.
The 27-year-old, who played under
the United manager Ten Hag at Ajax,
has conceded 14 goals in his six appear-
ances for his new club. “My start hasn’t
been so good, not how I wanted,”
Onana said.
“I still have a lot to prove [to the fans].
It’s difficult. It was an opportunity to
bounce back and, yes, it’s a tough time
[for me] and we have to be together and
learn from our mistake.”
Ten Hag, whose side fell to a third
consecutive defeat, said that Onana’s
team-mates let him down by failing to
stop Sané entering the penalty area. He
was furious at the way in which his team
allowed Jamal Musiala to run into the
area and tee up Serge Gnabry for
Bayern’s second goal.
Kane slams
home from the
spot to put
Bayern 3-1 up
in Munich
Rasmus Hojlund pulled one back for
United four minutes into the second
half, but three minutes later Harry
Kane scored a penalty to restore Bay-
ern’s two-goal lead. Two late goals from
Casemiro, which came either side of a
Mathys Tel volley, failed to mask
another subpar display from United.
“I am disappointed because when
you score three goals in Munich you
have to take a point and you have to
look in the mirror because the goals
were easy giveaways,” Ten Hag said.
“We were the best team in the open-
ing 25 minutes and then that goal was
so easy for them to score.
“It was not only André. You see how
easy Sané was going through and that
has to do with determination, you don’t
let players through so easily.
“That is the point. We have to cross
the line as an individual and a team to
win games, because it started there.”
Kane, who was interested in a move
to United this summer, enjoyed his first
Champions League game for Bayern.
“It was a crazy finish but I think for
the majority of the game we controlled
it,” Kane, the £100 million signing, said
after scoring his fifth goal for the club.
“Thankfully we were able to hold on
to the lead but, overall, it was a really
good start to the campaign against a
very good side in Man United.”
67
Sport
Glazers may
struggle to
sell because
of poor form
Matt Lawton
Chief Sports Correspondent
Manchester United’s poor start to the
Premier League season is having a
negative impact on the takeover
process, with bidders even less likely to
meet the owners’ inflated asking price
of more than £5 billion.
Discussions are continuing between
potential buyers and the New York
bank acting for the Glazer family. The
British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe and a
Qatari group fronted by Sheikh Jassim
bin Hamad al-Thani remain the two
favourites to purchase the club but their
offers of more than £5 billion did not
meet the American owners’ valuation.
Erik ten Hag’s side are 13th in the
Premier League table after securing
only six points from five games, and lost
their Champions League opener to
Bayern Munich last night. This poor
form, alongside a backdrop of off-field
problems, is worsening the likelihood of
a takeover.
There are a number of reasons why a
process that started in November last
year, when the Glazers first announced
that the club were for sale, has not yet
been completed.
At one stage Ratcliffe, the founder of
the petrochemicals firm Ineos, ap-
Ratcliffe seemed to be the frontrunner
to buy United before string of delays
peared to be close to agreeing a deal but
the legal challenges around limiting the
initial purchase to the 67 per cent stake
belonging to the Glazers is believed to
have caused delays.
Ultimately, however, there remains
some distance between the respective
valuations of the Glazers and the
bidders. While both the Qatari and
British offers amount to more than
£5 billion, the club’s principal owners
want more.
Sources with knowledge of the
process now say that United’s form —
and controversies involving Mason
Greenwood, Antony and Jadon Sancho
— are doing nothing to persuade either
of the main bidders to improve their
offers. Indeed, the manner of the 3-1
defeat against Brighton & Hove Albion
on Saturday served only to highlight
the sheer scale of the rebuilding job
required.
By the end of last season, United’s
value appeared to be soaring. Large-
scale investment is still required to
improve Old Trafford as well as the
club’s training ground but winning the
Carabao Cup and qualification for the
Champions League suggested some
stability and progress under Ten Hag.
Now, however, Ten Hag’s position is
under scrutiny, as is his buying policy.
Key signings have been made using the
same Dutch agency, Sports Entertain-
ment Group, that acts for the United
manager. At an all-staff meeting on
Monday, the chief executive, Richard
Arnold, urged colleagues to remain re-
silient while informing them that a stra-
tegic review was taking place.
 2GM Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

Sport Arsenal hit PSV for four

Arteta’s side make flying start to
life back in the European elite

Smith to make

Kane piles first ever start

at full back
Will Kelleher

on the pain
Deputy Rugby Correspondent,
Le Touquet
Marcus Smith is set to make his first
professional start at full back when
England take on Chile on Saturday,
with the captain Owen Farrell
replacing George Ford at fly half.
Steve Borthwick, the England head
6 Onana apologises for howler: I let team down coach, has been experimenting with
6 Takeover process impacted by United’s slump using his third-choice No 10, Smith, as a
replacement full back in the past four
matches — against Ireland and Fiji
in the World Cup warm-ups, and
against Argentina and Japan at the
Bayern Munich 4 tournament.
Now it is understood that Smith, 24,
Manchester United 3 will start in the No 15 jersey as part of a
Paul Hirst, Matt Lawton much changed and experimental line-
up against Chile in Lille this weekend.
André Onana said that he let his Smith will combine with Farrell, 31, as
Manchester United team-mates a second playmaker as Borthwick
down by committing the error that chooses to rotate Ford and Freddie
allowed Bayern Munich to open Steward out of the starting team.
the scoring in their Champions Barring any late changes, Steward,
League victory over Erik ten Hag’s who has started all 28 of his Tests since
side in Germany last night. his debut in 2021, is likely to drop out of
United were containing the 23-man squad entirely, with Ford
Bayern until the 28th moved to the replacements bench
minute, when Leroy’s alongside the centre Joe Marchant.
Sané’s shot squirmed Borthwick will confirm his team this
under the goalkeeper afternoon.
to give them their The team selection raises the possi-
first goal in a 4-3 win bility of all three England fly halves
at the Allianz Arena. playing in the back line during the
The defeat came second half of the Chile game.
on the day United’s Smith’s inclusion is likely to excite
poor form was cited England fans, who are desperate to see
as having a negative the team expand their attacking
impact on the club’s repertoire. While England have won
takeover process, with their opening two fixtures, 27-10
bidders less likely to against Argentina in Marseille, and
meet the asking price of 34-12 versus Japan in Nice, they are yet
more than £5 billion. to find their attacking groove.
“We started very well and after It will be intriguing to see how Ford,
my mistake we lost control of the Farrell and Smith are deployed;
game,” Onana said. “It’s a difficult whether Borthwick reunites Ford and
Farrell at No 10 and 12, respectively, in
the latter stages of the game, with
Smith playing the full match wearing
Kane scored his first European goal for Bayern from the spot, but it was a bad night for goalkeeper Onana who was consoled by Reguilón after his earlier error, inset

Times Crossword 28,714 across down Yesterday’s solution 28,713

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C U A I A E U
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26 27 The Times Crossword Championship 2023 will be held on Saturday October

21. For further information see times-event.com/crossword-championship y(7HB7E2*OTSNOT( |||+@!:'
 September 21 | 2023

Rise and shine!

All the reasons to be an early morning person
(it might make you slimmer and more successful)
2 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

times2

Roll up for Dross

Why it pays to
Tours, first stop: It’s official: you’ll
be slimmer if you
the Bake Off tent get up earlier, and
Deborah Ross that’s just one of
the many benefits,

I
t was announced this week
that Netflix has granted
permission for spin-off
holidays based on Emily in
“It’s like I was really there! Being
insulted!’’
Another says: “Your Hairy
Bikers Weekend has taught me
one that, according to our
feedback, is “just as forgettable”.
And that’s guaranteed.
says Peta Bee
Other trips we’re offering

B
Paris, the rom-com series everything I know about criss- include our Midsomer Murders ad news for late
starring Lily Collins that is crossing the country and Adventure, where you can play snoozers — new
widely mocked and also a searching for the best Irish stew your part in solving the weekly research shows that
pop-culture sensation, even like I’ve nothing better to do. murders that take place in a small having a lie-in instead of
if it isn’t true that once you start Thank you, thank you, thank you.” rural community where no one launching yourself out
watching you can’t stop. I did, The testimonials, they do keep questions the homicide rate, and of bed for a workout first
after half an episode. That sounds coming, so let’s keep going. “My the Grand Designs Experience, thing can take its toll on
sneery. I would have definitely three-night Handmaid’s Tale which should appeal to your waistline. The
persisted, had it not been quite Adventure was a bit dark, if I’m adrenaline junkies. “I’d done study, published this month in the
so bad. honest, with all those bodies the skydiving and I’d done the journal Obesity, found that when it
The five-night group trips hanging by the river, but I did like bungee jumping,” says one such comes to warding off body fat the time
will be hosted by “lifestyle the hat with the side flappy adrenaline junkie, “so knew I was of day you exercise matters, with
influencers” called ready for the stress of finding morning types who do it between
“Emileaders” and are run out whether the windows 7am and 9am more likely to stay slim.
by the travel company coming all the way from Of the 5,285 participants in the study,
Dharma which says: “Our core Germany will fit.” those who were moderately or
conviction is that the future Dross Tours Ltd would ask vigorously active with a morning
of travel is not about the you to consult with your workout — as measured by a fitness
where but about the why. doctor before booking this tracker — had a lower body mass
Series like Emily in Paris make one. It’s always a nail-biter. It index than those who worked out at
you wish there was a ‘Book may even be that winter will midday or in the evening.
This Trip’ button at the end arrive before the roof is on So if you thought Rishi Sunak’s
of every episode.” and the site will become decision to join a Britney Spears
Goddam it, I wish I’d made it waterlogged, then where Peloton class at 6am was ludicrous,
to the end of an episode since will you be, if you have a you were right, but only because he
I would like to experience that weak heart? could have had another hour in bed
feeling. I will now probably And we’ve had some lovely and still reaped the benefits.
never get to go on a trip hosted feedback about our Great Of course getting up and exercising
by lifestyle influencers called British Bake Off Weekender. “It first thing is harder for some than
“Emileaders”. I can be my own was great to see the tent,” says others. Dr Neil Stanley, a consultant
worst enemy sometimes. I yet another satisfied customer, sleep scientist and an early riser
hate myself more and more “and step inside and know that himself, says that our circadian Do your tax return or renew
every single day, if you want this is the place where, even if rhythm, the mechanics of our internal your driving licence by 10.30am
the truth. you make a cake in memory of body clocks, are mostly genetically It may sound like the worst imaginable
But it has given me an idea. your childhood friend who determined, although they are also way to start the day, but a team of
If there are these kinds of died of leukaemia, Paul will influenced by age, social and Canadian scientists are convinced
tourists out there, I will set up still say, ‘It’s a bit dry.’ ” This environmental factors. Not all of us that we should schedule our most
my own TV spin-off holiday things, blessed are the fruit,” says person added: “I may even book are natural larks and we are all slaves mentally challenging tasks — such as
company. In fact, I just have, and Ofjoe, who then booked our Love again so I can take my to our natural body rhythm. “Evening completing tax returns or complicated
you can book at Dross Tours Ltd. Island mini-break, was Ofcorey grandchildren. I do think it’s types tend to be on the back foot even forms — for early in the morning,
We’re barely up and running at for a bit, but is now Ofkai. important for them to see exactly before they get going because their particularly as we grow older.
Dross Tours Ltd but already have (Apparently, her mother, where you can bake a cake in natural sleep patterns are out of sync People in their sixties can match
many satisfied customers and Ofclive, despairs.) memory of your childhood friend with the typical working day, leaving younger adults in complex cognitive
have, amazingly, already been in Our Channel 5 Thriller Holiday, who died at nine and still get them groggy and tired first thing.” tasks, they reported in the journal
receipt of many five-star meanwhile, which runs Sunday to slagged off.” While the latest science might seem Psychology and Aging, provided they
testimonials. Thursday every night for a week, We hope you will book with another cruel blow to night owls, it’s tackle them in the morning when
“My Love It or List It Holiday is proving especially popular. “It Dross Tours Ltd. Remember, the not all bad news for them. Our bodies the brain networks responsible for
was so authentic I don’t know was entirely forgettable,” says one future of travel isn’t the where it’s and brains start to prepare us for the focus and attention are primed.
how I held it together while satisfied customer, “so well done the why. We’re not sure we day ahead as soon as we wake, with a
Kirsty and Phil walked round my you!” If you find it’s booked up, entirely get that but rest assured: cascade of chemicals and hormones
house gagging a bit,’’ says one. don’t panic as we also run an ITV it’s our core conviction too. that power us to better thinking,
productivity and fat-burning. There
are benefits to rising early for all of us A half-hour
Knox-Peebles then
wrote to the FT to
photographer he said:
“Why don’t I set up
photographer looked
up, the penny dropped,
if we make the most of mornings.
morning walk
The day I correct the record, down here while you go it was never mentioned Start with a cold splash
will set you up to
saying: “I wore no and get ready?” again. I should have A blast from a cold shower is certainly
scared the make-up. The ‘fright’ I was ready. Hair, owned it, like Knox- invigorating and will probably boost make decisions
look is naturally mine.” make-up, best clothes, Peebles. alertness and eradicate any feelings of
snapper Knox-Peebles, who is everything. I was too I love her so much grogginess at the start of the day, at Looking at changes in cognitive
81, spends most of the embarrassed/ashamed/ that if she were to show least according to proponents of the functions at different times of the day,
The music critic of production naked. I humiliated to admit it. an interest in booking short, sharp shock approach. But there they found that older adults “tend to
the Financial Times could not love Knox- So I did go upstairs but the Grand Designs is also evidence that it could boost be morning-type people”, and had
recently reviewed the Peebles more. couldn’t “get ready” Experience I would your productivity at work. A study greater activation of their brain’s
first night of the Royal It did put me in mind because I was already even be honest: “We from the Netherlands showed that attention-control regions — the
Opera’s Das Rheingold of a situation I once ready. If I was meant to sell it as adrenaline- repeated hot-to-cold shower blasts rostral prefrontal and superior parietal
and said that Rose found myself in. I had get more ready, how? filled but waiting to see lasting 30, 60 and 90 seconds at each cortex — between 8.30am and
Knox-Peebles, who plays to have my photograph I just sat on the end if the windows coming temperature for 30 days had a mild 10.30am. Their performance was
Erda, the earth goddess, taken at home for a of my bed and whistled all the way from effect on the hormones and cytokines noticeably better and they were less
had been “made up to newspaper. When I for ten minutes then Germany will fit is that support the immune system and prone to distraction than between
look a fright”. opened the door to the came back down. The quite boring, actually.” resulted in 29 per cent fewer sick days. 1pm and 5pm.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
get off to an early start
advises taking some supplements with
or just after breakfast. She says: “Most
supplements can be taken at any time
of the day, but if you take a
supplement of the B-complex vitamins
or a multivitamin that probably
contains one or more of the B vitamin
range, then morning is the best time to
pop them. The B vitamins play a key
role in nutrient metabolism and
energy production, and their energy-
boosting properties are most beneficial
not long after waking up.” It’s unwise
to take a multivitamin or B-complex
supplement later in the day when
there’s a possibility the buzz it provides
will prevent you from sleeping.
Tackle your in tray before
starting work
Research into the best time of day for
logical thinking showed that our
powers of rational thought peak
between 8am and 2pm, so aim to get
the heaviest cognitive workload done
as early as possible. Time of day has
also been shown to influence our
brain’s psychological response to
stress, with one study of 27 young
adults at Hokkaido
University in Japan
showing that the
subjects were better
able to deal with stress
loads two hours after
waking than ten
hours into the
day, another
reason to tackle
the in tray early.
Speak to your
boss or bank
Jennifer Aniston: manager in
the morning
Don’t put off your breakfast wakes at 4.30am There’s some
You might want to delay your first evidence that
meal if you’re on a time-restricted on a working anxiety levels are
diet, but front-loading calories influenced by our
with an early big breakfast can day to have a body’s circadian
help us to feel less hungry rhythm and can rise
throughout the day compared screen- free hour later in the day, with
with eating a later first meal, symptoms tending
according to research by to be more severe
Alexandra Johnstone, in the afternoon or
professor of nutrition at the evening. The
Rowlett Institute at the psychologist
University of Aberdeen. Dearbhla
At the start of the day Amal McCullough says
Clooney apparently swears that afternoon
by seaweed soup, but it’s Amal Clooney: anxiety can also
better to pack in a high be affected by a
percentage of protein foods breakfast of blood-sugar slump
including yoghurt, scrambled and fatigue, and
eggs, fish, or a smoothie with seaweed soup that we can come to
added quark or tofu in place of expect higher levels of
refined carbs (to be fair, Clooney stress and anxiety in the
sometimes has a boiled egg afternoons. “If you can
chaser with her broth). “Eating face it, the morning is
more protein at breakfast will probably the best time
help to ward off hunger pangs,” to tackle stressful
Johnstone says. “It has the effect situations head-on,” she
of making you feel full.” says. “It leaves less time
As a bonus, a recent study in Rishi Sunak: for ruminating.”
the International Journal of
Epidemiology showed that takes a 6am Schedule in five
people who eat breakfast before minutes of morning
8am each day have a reduced Britney Spears meditation
risk of type 2 diabetes compared This doesn’t mean you have to
with people who eat it after 9am. Peloton class emulate Jennifer Aniston and
rise at 4.30am on working days
If you do pop a multivitamin, to have a screen-free hour to
take it early on meditate and walk the dogs, but
Gabriela Peacock, the nutritionist and it would do you the power of
author of 2 Weeks to a Younger You, good to adopt her practice on
non-working days, when she does the
same thing at a less mind-numbing
8am. Even in the morning, levels of
stress hormones such as cortisol rise
by as much as 50 per cent within half
an hour of waking up, putting you on
alert for the day ahead, according to
psychologists from the University of
Dusseldorf. This makes early morning
the perfect time to try meditation or
therapy.
“Your brain will tend to soak up
anything at this time of day,”
McCullough says. “And there’s
evidence that making meditation a
morning routine makes it easier to
stick to.” One study of nearly 900,000
users of a meditation app, published in
the Journal of Medical Internet
Research, showed that those who used
it in the morning were more likely to
stick to the practice than those who
meditated at other times of the day.
And calming the mind can help you
to avoid a downturn in working
memory — the type that helps you to
learn and retain information — later
in the day, say psychologists at Penn
State University, who found that
focusing on work stresses when you
wake had a negative effect.
Try to get outside early
Daylight affects the timing
mechanisms of our brains, helping to
regulate the inner body clock that
controls our physiology and behaviour.
Stepping outside even for five to ten
minutes as soon as you can after
waking will provide a brain boost that
improves your mood, reduces stress
levels and improves sleep. A study of
office workers in the journal Sleep
Health showed that those who had the
greatest exposure to morning light
also fell asleep faster and slept more
soundly at night.
Make those big decisions after
a brisk morning walk
Heading out for a half-hour walk first
thing will boost levels of brain-derived
neurotropic growth factor (BDNF),
a protein that plays an important role
in the growth and activity of
information-transmitting neurons in
the brain and will set you up for
making important decisions about
investments or changing jobs.
Researchers at the University of
Western Australia reported in the
British Journal of Sports Medicine that
midlifers who took a morning walk
experienced elevated levels of BDNF,
leading to improvements in decision-
making compared with people who sat
down. Fitting in a walk, cycle or run
before breakfast has the added
advantage of priming your
metabolism, with nutritionists at the
University of Bath showing it
enhances fat-burning and aspects of
cardiometabolic health such as better
blood sugar and blood lipid control.
A final word of warning: despite all the
positive effects of being a morning
person, researchers at Harvard found
that it makes you more likely to cheat
and make immoral choices in the
evening hours. Sunita Sah, a research
fellow, said this had “implications for
workplaces”. Something to ponder
while you’re having your early-
morning meditation.
3
times2
The lowdown
Detachment
game
Thought The Hunger Games was
brutal? It’s got nothing on the latest
frontier in failed friendship. Do you
have “detachment game”?
I have no idea what that is but it
sounds savage. Tell me more.
Well, sink your gossip-hungry
teeth into this: it was used by
Jessica Mulroney.
Hmm. Who?
Well, exactly. She was once known
as BFF to Meghan Markle. Now . . .
She’s just the woman who coined the
term “detachment game”?
Not quite. She reposted it from the
Instagram account “positive vibes
quotes”. Mulroney is a stylist and
marketing consultant with 403,000
Instagram followers in her own
right — and that’s who she spoke of
her DG to.
I see. And this was in relation to
Megs?
Maybe. The pair used to be thick as
thieves, reportedly, when working
on Suits and when Meghan first met
Harry. Mulroney was at their
wedding and spoke out in support of
Meghan when asked to comment on
how she was adapting to royal life.
Despite that, they have since — and
also allegedly — stopped talking.
More’s the pity. Why?
Only they know. But relations
between them are said to have
been cool for a few years after
Mulroney came under fire on
social media in the wake of the
Black Lives Matter movement.
This is odd. The shedding of
inconvenient people is
uncharacteristic behaviour from
Meghan.
Right? But back to Mulroney. She
has never spoken publicly on the
supposed rift but recently reshared
that ambiguous meme on an
Instagram story that read: “As
loving as I am, my detachment
game is strong.”
Ouch.
Hannah Rogers
4 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

the table

Would you pay £22 for a packet of

What if it was the
El Bulli star chef’s
tagliatelle, asks
Hannah Evans,
who gives it a try

W
hen a
Michelin-
starred chef
like Albert
Adrià
launches
a line of
dried pasta
for £22 a packet, unsurprisingly the
first thought that comes to mind is:
“How much?” And then, after
double-checking the price: “Wow,
they’re not joking.”
So out of respect for Adrià, one of
Spain’s most celebrated chefs, before
we get on to the numbers, I will first
tell you how he created Atavi, his line
of luxury tagliatelle. After all, that is
what he and his team have been
labouring over for the past two years.
“I was tasked with creating
something new and innovative with
dried pasta. I was told I couldn’t add
any flavours or herbs. All I could do
was use water and wheat,” he tells me.
We’re meeting on the morning of an Each strand
Atavi pop-up that Adrià is hosting in
north London, where guests will have
a three-course meal of his pasta.
costs 13p
Why didn’t they ask an Italian?
“That was my question too,” he tells
me with a shrug. And then he checks
himself. “I’m not Italian. But in Spain
we eat a lot of pasta. In China, in been toasted and smoked with wine it, citing the stress of operating a two- Albert Adrià and, that’s happened for social equality
Japan, wherever you go. Of course it’s canes. The wheat is also nixtamalised Michelin-starred establishment. above, his carbonara because of the impact it’s had. The
an emblem of Italy, but what we want — an ancient technique used in South “The pressure of running a place using his new smoked only sad thing is that [because of the
is to get out of this mindset that you America, where the grains are soaked with such high expectations is intense, tagliatelle kiss] we’re now not speaking about the
can only make pasta the Italian way and cooked in limewater before being I can understand,” Adrià says on success of the women’s team.”
for it to be good.” dried and ground into flour. reflection. In 2021 he shut all the I return to Adrià’s kitchen in north
Along with his elder brother Ferran, At the moment you can only buy restaurants in the ElBarri group as a London the same evening to try the
Adrià is considered one of the most online, at atavi.uk. Chefs and result of the pandemic. The same year, three pastas, cooked and eaten as he
influential Spanish chefs. Together restaurateurs can also buy in bulk if the El Bulli Foundation closed. Today envisioned, paired with ingredients
they ran El Bulli restaurant in they want to use the pasta in their he runs only Enigma in Barcelona. that “enhance and complement their
Catalonia, which held three Michelin restaurants. Each packet takes roughly “I went from running multiple flavours”, he tells us. The sourdough,
stars and was described as “the most a week to make using bespoke restaurants to just one. But [back then] served with tomatoes three ways, is
imaginative generator of haute cuisine machinery, compared with the few I had an unhealthy life. The dilemma first, followed by smoked tagliatelle
on the planet”. In 2011 it closed for two hours it takes to create a mass- with Spain is that we get tourists at with saffron and parmesan, and a rich
years before Adrià reopened it as the produced pack of pasta in a factory. It’s 8pm and then locals at 10, 10.30. I umami course to round it off.
El Bulli Foundation, a culinary anything but ultra-processed. “It’s would close my restaurant at 2 o’clock Each course bounces from one
development centre. Until 2021, Adrià artisanal,” Adrià says. “Using those in the morning. Now I am much punchy flavour to another and it’s not
also co-owned the ElBarri group of processes opened a whole new world happier. For the first time in my life I like any tagliatelle I’ve had before —
acclaimed restaurants in Barcelona. of possibilities.” am alone. I have a beautiful restaurant but I’m slightly disappointed with the
The tagliatelle comes in sourdough, Which goes some way to explain the where I am the chef and the owner.” measly portions we’re given. When I
umami and smoked flavours. Each is price — roughly 13p per strand (yes, I Adrià, who has a son, Alex, with his have pasta, I like a huge bowl. Perhaps
made with only two ingredients, flour counted how many were in a pack), wife, Silvia Fernández, has not nailed they were on a money-saving drive . . .
and water. It’s the process of how they making it the world’s most expensive the work-life balance quite yet. He And so I decide to make it again, but
are made that creates each distinct pasta. Adrià, however, is not fussed dreams of the day he will buy his this time at home, with just butter,
taste and smell. “If we couldn’t about the price. “Price is relative. You’d house with a pool and retire there with garlic and some parmesan. And yes,
introduce new ingredients, we had to spend that on a round of gin and a dog. Late nights at the restaurant really, you can taste a difference . . . if
think of new ways we could treat the tonics you’d drink in 30 minutes and happen, but he prefers the freedom he you concentrate. The sourdough tastes
wheat,” Adrià explains. not think twice.” has to “work in the shadows” lemony and, while it’s boiling, I get
The sourdough, which “has all the
flavours of a freshly baked loaf”, Adrià
This week the chef Marcus Wareing
announced the closure of Marcus, his
developing products like Atavi.
He didn’t find much time to watch
You’d whiffs of fresh bread. The smoked
pasta has an oaky taste, a bit like
claims, is made from Italian durum restaurant at the Berkeley Hotel in the Women’s World Cup, but he did spend that whisky, and the umami has a miso
wheat, sourdough and water. Each Knightsbridge, which had one manage to see Spain win the final. flavour. It reminds me of soy sauce.
packet is made from the same starter Michelin star. In a statement Wareing Which meant he also witnessed the on a round Will this replace the trusty packet of
they’ve had for two years. The umami
is made using a Japanese technique
said: “It was time for me to move on.”
Just a few weeks before that, Michel
infamous moment the Spanish FA
boss Luis Rubiales kissed the player of gin and penne I reach for when I want
midweek comfort food? At £22 a pop,
called koji fermentation. The wheat is
fermented for 40 hours with A.oryzae
Roux revealed that after 34 years at
the helm of Le Gavroche, the
Jenni Hermoso on the lips during the
presentation ceremony.
tonics and it’s unlikely. But if I want to make a
fuss at a dinner party and cook
(a microfungus) which gives it an
intense miso-y taste. And the smoked
celebrated French restaurant his
father, Albert, and uncle Michel
“It was ridiculous, wasn’t it? It’s a
serious problem,” he says. “Maybe it’s
not think something that comes with a story but
saves on effort? Then fine-dining pasta
flavour is made using wheat that has opened in 1967, he was going to close one of the most important things twice is a concept I can get on board with.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
pasta? Nocellara aren’t the only
Smoked tagliatelle
carbonara
Serves 4
Ingredients
200g guanciale (Italian
cured meat)
3 egg yolks
140g pecorino cheese, finely grated
280g smoked tagliatelle
Salt
Black pepper
Method
1 Cut the guanciale into 0.5cm-thick
slices, remove the rind and cut into
strips. In a hot frying pan, brown the
guanciale over medium heat for 10
min, stirring often to prevent burning.
Once golden brown, remove the
guanciale and
set aside.
2 In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the
pecorino, adding one or two
tablespoons of the guanciale fat.
3 Cook the smoked tagliatelle
according to the instructions,
reserving some cooking water. Drain
and add to the frying pan. Toss for a
few seconds.
4 Remove the pan from the heat. Add
the egg and pecorino mixture. Add the
guanciale and toss the tagliatelle,
adjusting the consistency with cooking
water.
5 Season with ground black pepper
and serve.
5
the table
olives, it just feels that way
They’ve become
ubiquitous — but
are there better
options out there?
By Giulia Crouch
B
ig, buttery and vibrant
light green, nocellara
olives have been the
variety of choice for the
hip, small-plated
restaurant scene for a
while now, but is it time
their dominance came
to an end? Nick Bramham, the head
chef at Quality Wines restaurant in
Clerkenwell, London, thinks so,
bemoaning the ubiquity of the creamy
Sicilian olive in the latest edition of
the online food newsletter Vittles.
“The nocellara olive has spread
through menus like smoked cod’s roe
did in 2012,” he said. His theory?
Customers don’t really eat olives, they
just decorate the table with them and
so are not willing to pay more than
£5 for a plate. So “every restaurant
serves nocellaras because they’re the
least bad olive you can get away with
serving for £5, still turn a modest
profit, and not lose too much sleep at which I think is amazing,” Brown says.
night knowing a significant number “It’s very Real Housewives of Clapton
Nocellara del Belice
went in the bin, uneaten”.
He’s right, they are ubiquitous — so
[the Instagram account parodying east
London millennials], I know, but the The six olivesdirect.co.uk, from £3.95 for 175g
widespread that the smartphone emoji
even appears to be a nocellara to me
Perello brand is the best.” They’re the
ones sold in attractive green and white olives to The buttery ones! Bright green, nutty,
creamy Sicilian olives. Perfect with a
— but I’d suggest that’s less to do with
them being the right price point and
tins, found at places like Ocado — and
your “foodie” friend’s dinner party. buy now glass of crisp wine and a chunk of
pecorino cheese. I am team nocellara.
more to do with how tasty they are.
Nocellara, or as my mum and I call
Michele Pascarella, who was just
crowned global pizza-maker of the Perello gordal pitted olives
them “the buttery ones”, have a firm year for his work at his London 150g, souschef.co.uk, £3.99
but creamy texture and nutty, fruity, pizzerias Napoli on the Road, says There’s a reason these plump babies
clean flavour, tasting as green as they there’s nocellara and there’s nocellara. are a cult favourite — juicy, crisp and
look. Bramham doesn’t dislike them “You have to be careful which ones with added chilli for a little kick,
either — “They’re actually delicious. you get because there are hundreds of they’re the perfect appetiser.
Creamy, with a gentle salinity,” he says varieties,” he says. “I use the Sicilian
— but he’d appreciate more variety in nocellara from Belice for appetisers Espinaler olives stuffed with
restaurants’ olive game. because they are sweet and salty at anchovies
What does everyone else think? the same time. For my pizza I use 350g, thewrightbrothers.co.uk, £4.10
Have we been missing out on another, more mature black olives such as a Buy these and you’re two thirds of
even more delicious olive? leccino from Tuscany and Gaeta olives your way towards a gilda. These are
“Nocellara don’t have the most [like a Greek Kalamata] from Lazio, manzanilla fina olives stuffed with
personality, but they are a good eating which have a mildly tart flavour that anchovy paste, which brings a richness
olive worthy of any table,” says Jacob I transform into a powder to sprinkle and savouriness. An obsession.
Kenedy, the chef-patron of the Italian on top.”
restaurant Bocca di Lupo. “We serve Maybe nocellara will be pushed out Organic Kalamata olives
Cerignola, which are bigger and a bit by something bigger, bolder and more unpitted with bay leaves
more buttery, alongside little wild boisterous in flavour: the gilda. It’s a 295g, souschef.co.uk, £4.90
green and black olives from Calabria. Basque pintxo (snack) that has waltzed If you’re going to buy black olives,
They are amazing — oily and bitter, its way onto trendy restaurant menus never buy pitted: they are rubbery
the opposite of the green freshness of recently. It’s an olive, an anchovy and and awful, not like these delicious
Cerignola or nocellara. But generally, a pickled green guindilla pepper — Kalamata olives.
if an olive is good, I love it.” If you and, if you like it the Morito way, a
want to try the wild olives, you can zingy silverskin onion — on a cocktail Organic rosate di bitetto olives
order them here: vallebona.co.uk/ stick, to be enjoyed as a delicious 190g, seggiano.com, £6
black-green-wild-olives. briny, umami, spicy bite. These delicately flavoured olives from
Tom Brown, the chef-owner of the The wine expert Hannah Crosbie, Puglia may be the ones to convince
Michelin-starred fish restaurant who says that olives are a natural olive-hating friends they’re wrong.
Cornerstone, wouldn’t turn his nose partner to drinks, loves a gilda. “Now
up at a nocellara either. “I love them,” I’ve had them, nothing else will do,” Nicolas Alziari small cailletier
he says, “but my personal favourite are she says. “I don’t like my olives plain olives from Côte d’Azur
Spanish gordal olives.” any more — I like them faffed with.” 220g, souschef.co.uk, £8.99
Gordal olives (the “fat one” in So the next time the waiter brings a Salty, briny and slightly sour, these
Spanish) are juicy, citrusy and not small plate of nocellara to the table, exceptionally tasty olives are also
bitter like some other varieties. “They savour them. You might not be served known as niçoise. You can see why
have a savoury, almost meaty flavour, them for too much longer. they work so well in the famous salad.
6 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

times2

‘The shame is
with the abuser;
we’re turning our
pain into power’
After Hannah McLaughlan reported her ex to the
police she discovered he had raped and assaulted
others. Now his victims are campaigning for change
in the justice system, they tell Julia Llewellyn Smith

I
n late 2020 Hannah McLaughlan
decided to report her
ex-boyfriend of nearly two years,
Logan Doig, to the police after
he attempted to strangle her.
“After that, my brain went into
overdrive. I began to uncover
the trauma and realise how
much of an abusive relationship I’d
had with him,” she says.
McLaughlan, 25, a primary school
teacher, knew a couple of Doig’s
ex-girlfriends’ names “because he used
to speak about them in a very negative
way”. She decided to contact one,
Hannah Reid, whom she’d never met
and who lived in a different town. “It
was very surface-level at first, there
was nothing too deep or personal, we
just bonded over the fact Logan wasn’t
a nice person.” A third ex-girlfriend
joined them in an iMessage group
chat, and then they were joined by two
other women connected to Doig —
Holly Prowse and Jennifer McCann.
They called the group “safe space”
and, as trust built, began sharing
details of how Doig had raped and/or
sexually abused them all.
The aim of the group was mutual
support, not to avenge Doig’s crimes,
yet boosted by each other’s
understanding, over the next four
months each woman decided to go to
the police. “My relationship with
Logan had ended in 2016, so initially
I’d no intention of reporting. I was
there as a sounding board to help
others,” says Reid, 23, a stay-at-home
mother who’d met Doig when she was
14 and been raped four times by him.
“But then I realised there was a bigger
picture — that I had to stop him doing
this to other women.”
Nearly three years after “safe space”
began, Doig, 23, was found guilty by a
jury of raping and sexually assaulting
four women and sexually assaulting a
fifth. At his sentencing in July, in the
High Court in Glasgow, four of the
I realised I had
to stop him
doing this to
other women
Hannah McLaughlan, women sat in the front row holding
Hannah Reid and hands as they learnt that Doig (who
Jennifer McCann didn’t attend) would serve nine and a
half years in prison, a sentence the
judge, noting Doig’s “lack of remorse
or empathy”, said would have been
longer were it not for a recent change
in Scottish law stating that under-25s
should have shorter sentences with
“rehabilitation prioritised over
incarceration”.
After sentencing, the four agreed —
as McCann says, “on a whim” — to
waive the anonymity granted to
survivors of sexual offences and be
photographed outside court. They
then tweeted about their disgust at
Doig’s sentence. “He raped me from
the ages of 15 to 17. Went on to rape a
further four victims. We have a life
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
sentence of trauma and PTSD. He
can’t be rehabilitated,” Reid wrote.
“We decided to waive anonymity
because so often you’re made to feel
you should be ashamed of being
abused,” McLaughlan says. “We need
to try and eradicate that. The shame is
with the abuser, not the victims.”
Now the women are campaigning
for changes to the Scottish (and
UK-wide) justice system, which they
feel is failing survivors of sexual
offences. “We’re turning our pain into
power,” Reid says with gentle pride.
I’m talking to Reid, McCann and
McLaughlan on Zoom in their homes
dotted around Scotland at the end of
their working days. The bond between
them is palpable — they coo over
Reid’s toddler (he needs a kidney
transplant and the friends have
volunteered as potential donors) as he
wanders into shot and the antics of
each other’s dogs, deferring to each
other so each speaks with passionate
assurance. Prowse, who was
photographed with them, has decided
to step back from the public eye.
Doig’s fifth victim always retained
anonymity. The others fully support
them. “There’s never been any
obligation to go public,” says Reid, 23,
a healthcare support assistant.
The trio’s further ordeal in the hands
of the justice system are borne out by
Dame Vera Baird, the former victims’
commissioner for England and Wales,
who in a 2020 report noted that rape
was “effectively being decriminalised”,
and later that reporting rape was “a
lottery and the odds are rarely in
your favour”. In 2021 Baird underlined
that while 67,125 rapes were reported
in 2021, the highest figure yet,
the number of completed rape
prosecutions plummeted from 5,190
in 2016-17 to 2,409 in 2020-21. Only
5 per cent of rapes that were given
an outcome by the police in 2021
resulted in a charge.
Endless lip service has been paid to
improving victim support but — as
Baird noted, and the women
experienced — virtually none
materialised. “They sell you this dream
to get you involved and once you’re
involved and a piece of evidence,
you’re tucked on a shelf and left,”
McLaughlan says.
Doig was arrested in February 2021,
but it was two years before his case
came to court. “We were gobsmacked
it took so long. In that time I got
engaged, fell pregnant, had my child
and got married. But we found out
that’s quite a short period compared to
most people,” Reid says. “It’s a dark
cloud hanging over you for years.”
Preliminary hearings to set a trial
date were postponed seven times.
“Half the time we’d only know the
hearing was cancelled again from
looking at the court rolls and seeing
Logan’s name had been taken away.
Nobody thought to tell us,” Reid
continues. One time the hearing was
cancelled on a Friday and the women
had to wait until Monday for the new
date. “It was one of the worst
weekends of our lives. Logan knew
exactly what, when, where, who, but
we had no idea.”
In that time, Doig was on bail with
the only condition attached that he
should not approach any of the
women. “I was petrified he’d read our
statements,” McLaughlan says. “When
I left work I’d be walking to my car,
thinking he was going to come and kill
me. Every time I left my house, I’d
make an escape plan. In the
Waiting for the
trial, we were
consumed by
potential dread
supermarket I’d be looking to see
where was the nearest exit. My whole
nervous system was on edge. I phoned
the police and said, ‘I just can’t keep
going like this’, and they said he
couldn’t approach me. I said, ‘But what
if he does?’ They had no answer.”
Recent statistics show these delays,
combined with low conviction rates
and a fear of reliving the crime in
court, mean 69.2 per cent of those
subjected to sexual assault in England
and Wales withdraw from
investigations. “There were so many
times when — for various reasons —
each one of us wanted to pull out but
with each other’s support we were able
to see it through to the end. Often I
was really struggling, thinking ‘What
is the point?’ You feel so isolated,”
McLaughlan says.
Yet once a trial date was set, the
women stopped communicating,
warned their friendship might be used
by the prosecution as evidence of an
organised vendetta. “Waiting for the
trial was absolutely dreadful, you were
consumed by potential dread,” says
McCann, who was 17 when Doig raped
her in her student accommodation,
and hadn’t even told her family she
was preparing to testify.
“You’re desperately seeking
information about what’s going to
happen but none is there,” Reid says.
Promises of a familiarisation visit to
court never materialised, while
meeting the prosecutor representing
them, who’d been allocated the case
just the week before, ended up — in
McCann’s words — being “25 minutes
in the car park three days before the
trial started”.
Each went into the witness box
(Reid’s cross-examination lasted
six and a half hours) only to
experience what Baird called the
“highly re-traumatising” ordeal of
giving evidence.
“We understand [defence lawyers]
have a job to do and everyone has the
right to be represented and have a fair
trial,” McLaughlan says. “But the way
it’s currently done is unacceptable.
There needs to be stricter guidelines
on what defence lawyers can say to a
victim giving evidence. You feel like
you’re fighting for your life and that
[defence lawyer] would not have
stopped until he’d broken you.”
“The trial was fair for Logan but it
wasn’t fair for us,” McCann says. “I was
asked things like what was I expecting
when I let Logan into my flat on the
night it happened. The [defence]
wanted you to have a breakdown so
they could hold it against you. It was
like psychological warfare.”
Once the women had given
evidence they were allowed to
communicate with each other again,
but they weren’t allowed the catharsis
of attending the verdict. “We were
advised if we sat there looking good it
wouldn’t reflect well on the Crown
because the jury would think we
weren’t that traumatised — even
though the jury had already made up
their minds,” McCann says. They
ended up learning the verdict from
emails or phone calls. “So it was hard
to digest and process, I just felt numb.”
They’d hoped they’d be able to read
out carefully worded impact
statements at sentencing but were told
understaffing made this impossible.
“They said, ‘We’ve left it too late to
organise it!’ ” McLaughlan says. “I was
like, ‘You’ve had two and a half years.’ ”
Now the women’s friendship has
moved beyond talk of Doig. “We
started off not knowing a single thing
about each other. We live in different
parts of Scotland, Logan is the only
common denominator,” McLaughlan
says. “But now a lot of the time we just
talk about everyday things.”
At the same time, their different
backgrounds have helped each other
to heal. “We’ve seen there is life after
abuse,” says McCann, who dropped
out of college after her rape. “The
family life [Reid’s] created for herself
has been inspirational when some of
us hadn’t been able to approach a man
with a 10ft pole. The way
[McLaughlan’s] finished uni and
started teaching — you see there is a
whole life after abuse, you don’t need
to be stuck in your past.”
The challenges aren’t yet over. Doig
is now appealing against his
conviction. After speaking out the
women received thousands of
messages of support but also torrents
of misogynistic abuse and suggestions
they’ve done this for “attention”.
“There’ve been so many people saying
we’re liars, picking holes in what we’ve
said and twisting it,” McCann adds.
Yet the friends won’t be cowed. “I’ve
always compared the justice system to
Russian roulette because they’re
playing with people’s lives. Even after
verdicts and sentencing, people take
their lives because it’s such a hellish
process,” McCann continues. “Doing
this is not going to change what
happened to us, which was barbaric.
But if we know we’re doing everything
we can to help other people, we can
find some peace.”
Instagram @safe_space_4
7
times2
The meaning of
Macron’s royal gift
T
he pictures of the King and
By Damian President Macron suggest
relations are tremendously
Whitworth cordiale, bordering on le
bromance. Jokes shared.
Tender gazes. And a presidential hand
reaching for the kingly upper arm.
The French president is the master
of the ancient diplomatic art of
combining flattery with subtle
one-upmanship. One of his gifts to
Charles was a rare original edition of
Les Racines du Ciel (The Roots of
Heaven) by Romain Gary. The 1956
novel, which won the Prix Goncourt,
France’s highest literary prize, is the
story of an environmentalist’s crusade
to save elephants from
extinction in French
Equatorial Africa.
For a king who sees
himself as the original
environmentalist, this
present seemed
apposite. And it would
not have been lost on
king or president that
their talks came on the
day when Rishi Sunak
was rowing back on net
zero promises.
But was there also a
pinch of showing-off?
“What a wonderful
green advocate you are, oh
Romain Gary with King,” Macron might have been
his wife, Jean Seberg, saying. “But the original eco-novel was
in 1967. Top: King written by a French hero when you
Charles and Emmanuel were still in short trousers.”
Macron in Paris Gary was an extraordinary figure
who contrived to win the Prix
Goncourt twice. Authors are only
supposed to be awarded the prize
once, but he did so a second time
under a pseudonym, Emile Ajar, who
was supposedly Algerian.
In the Sixties he married Jean
Seberg, the American actress. Their
tempestuous marriage included affairs
on both sides and he challenged Clint
Eastwood, one of his wife’s lovers, to a
duel. Eastwood did not accept.
At least as the King thumbs through
his gift (he has excellent French), he
can reflect that the Élysée did at least
give careful thought to it. After all,
diplomatic gifts can be the equivalent
of a bunch of flowers from the garage.
Who can forget what happened
when Gordon Brown gave President
Obama a pen holder carved from the
timbers of the sister ship that provided
wood for the desk in the Oval Office?
Obama’s team went to the present
drawer and found a box set of 25
DVDs for Brown. That’s a lot of
viewing and a huge insight into that
particular special relationship.
8 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
arts
Gizza job! I can still
do that: the return
of the Boys from
the Blackstuff
James Graham and Alan Bleasdale tell Andrew Billen about
bringing a new play inspired by the hit TV series to Liverpool
W
hen the
BBC first
broadcast
Boys
from the
Blackstuff
in October
1982, Mrs
Thatcher was rejoicing in her
Falklands victory, unemployment had
reached 3.3 million and Labour was
months from humiliation at the polls.
Alan Bleasdale, the series’ writer,
meanwhile, was trekking weekly from
Liverpool to Sheffield, where his play
It’s a Madhouse was in rehearsal at the
Crucible Theatre. He would travel on
a Monday, the day after the latest
episode aired.
“On that first Monday morning,” he
says, “so many people on the train
were talking about episode one, and
then I got off the train, and I got from
Manchester to Sheffield, and different
people, a different class of people,
office workers, were talking about it.
The next week I heard exactly the
same. The third week, I got on the
train and, again, the same reactions.
Then the play opened and I never,
ever found out what people thought
about Yosser’s Story.”
Yosser’s Story, the five-parter’s
devastating penultimate episode,
became its most famous. Yosser
Hughes, one of the six Liverpudlian
tarmac layers left jobless in the
recession that hit Liverpool
particularly savagely because its docks
were in their death throes, was an
ambitious man who wanted to “be
someone”. Played by Bernard Hill,
these days at least as well known for
The Lord of the Rings, Yosser was by
now certifiably mad, headbutting his
way around the city with his desperate
pleas “gizza job” and “I could do that”.
Since they both became
catchphrases, Bleasdale would soon
realise the impact episode four had
made. Four decades on, however, he
will now hear an audience’s reaction
for himself. For the first time
Liverpool’s Royal Court is presenting a
stage version, a coup for the revitalised
1,100-seat theatre in which Bleasdale
saw Elvis Costello play in the days
when “the place just smelled of piss”.
Bleasdale and the adaptation’s
author, the prolific 41-year-old TV and
stage writer James Graham (This
House, Ink, Quiz, Dear England), are in
the Royal Court’s plush bar nine days
before the first night. Now 77 and with
failing sight, Bleasdale enters leaning
on a walker, a gentle, funny, modest
man with vigorous memories of his
masterpiece. He says the Theatre
Royal’s executive producer, Kevin
Fearon, would ring him every New
Year’s Day asking him to turn Boys
into a play for him. “And I’d say, ‘I
don’t know how to do it and I don’t
trust anyone else to do it.’ ’’
I felt like Yosser:
‘I think I can do
that,’ but I didn’t
know if I could
In 2018, however, the director Kate
Wasserberg wrote a passionate letter
to his agent proposing to produce it for
her then theatre company. “I said no
initially and then she wrote another
passionate letter, and then she
introduced me to James,” he says.
Bleasdale knew Graham was young,
“which was unforgivable”, and had had
two plays on in the West End
simultaneously. When he then read
a compendium of his work, however,
he thought it “utterly sensational”.
Graham, meanwhile, had seen Boys
when it was repeated in his
adolescence and credited it as the
reason he became a playwright.
Bleasdale, Graham and Wasserberg
met in a Chinese restaurant on the
Mersey and discussed the risks of
putting these characters on stage,
whether the community wanted it and
whether the time was right. Graham,
whose specialism is dramatising recent
history, felt it was: Britain was
approaching another crossroads; the
Tories, post-Brexit, were running out
of steam and something was being
born on the left — but what?
As for Liverpool, it no
longer has one of the
country’s highest
unemployment rates but it
does suffer shocking levels of
long-term sickness and mental and
behavioural disorders. “Now most
people have a job, some people have
three jobs, but it’s as precarious as
ever. If you’re a Deliveroo driver or
you’re on zero-hours contracts,
you are in poverty in work,”
Graham says. Yet he still felt
trepidation about turning more
than six hours of television,
including the excellent Play
for Today, The Black Stuff, that
preceded the series, into two hours of
popular theatre.
“I felt a bit like Yosser,” he says to
Bleasdale. “‘I can do that. Give us this
job. I think I can do that.’ Except I
didn’t know if I could do it.”
The play is billed as “Alan
Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff
by James Graham”, but they regard it
as a collaboration with the senior
writer making suggestions and
attending workshops. “Mine’s the
original voice. He has taken my voice
and thrown it,” Bleasdale explains.
Left: Mark Womack, The original series has always been
Barry Sloane and seen as a response to Thatcher’s
Aron Julius, also economic policy. In fact it was largely
below, in the Royal written during the previous Labour
Court production government but BBC1 had turned
down the script not, Bleasdale thinks,
for political reasons, but because “they
thought it was crap’’. Eventually the
producer, Michael Wearing,
approached the controller of BBC2,
Brian Wenham, who took it on trust.
“So it went out at exactly the time
when unemployment went mad,
which was very lucky
for me.”
Nevertheless,
budgets were low.
Four out of the
five episodes
were shot on
videotape by
Match of the Day
cameramen. An
extra scene, set in
a psychiatric office, was
commissioned at the last minute
because it was cheaper than doing
the scheduled outdoor shoot.
“I gave it to Bernard Hill the night
before and he wasn’t happy. He went
in and did it the next day and it’s one
of the great, great performances.” For
Bleasdale it was a family affair:
because Hill was a close friend, the
playwright’s own children played
Yosser’s children. A cousin, Gary
Bleasdale, played one of the Boys’
grown-up sons, and another was a
production driver.
The public responded with a mix of
shock and delight, and Boys was
reshown on BBC1. Nothing in art
had as vividly explained the human
cost of unemployment. Yet its
influence can also be exaggerated.
Boys did not lead to the election of the
the times | Thursday September 21 2023
I want Keir
Starmer to sit,
have a pint and
watch the show
Labour leader Michael Foot nor the
saving of Liverpool’s docks, which
were doomed because the new
container ships were too big for the
basin and dock entrance.
Graham, brought up in
Nottinghamshire in the wake of the
1984 miners’ strike, does not argue
that uneconomic mines and unsuitable
docks deserved to survive. “But had
you just invested a few million back
then in replacing these industries with
something else, with training,
investment and art, I would argue it
could have been different. To really
level up now, 40 years later, is going to
cost the equivalent of the reunification
of Germany.”
For his part, Bleasdale, who was
brought up in Harold Wilson’s
constituency of Huyton, eight miles
from the centre of Liverpool, disliked
the city’s Eighties Militant Tendency
leader Derek Hatton, and liked
Michael Heseltine, the Tory minister
who attempted to revitalise the city.
He was a fan of Neil Kinnock, who
never made it to power. And Jeremy
Corbyn and Keir Starmer? “They’re
not for me.”
Boys was never agitprop. None of
the six unemployed tarmacers
struggling to make a living is much
interested in the fiery politics of their
plasterer colleague, Snowy, as devoted
to Marxism as he is to craftsmanship
Alan Bleasdale, front
and centre, with the
cast of the 1982 TV
series, including
Bernard Hill, bottom
left. Left: Bleasdale and
James Graham
Boys from the
Blackstuff is at the
Royal Court, Liverpool,
to October 28
(Bleasdale and Graham agree Snowy
would be outraged by the RAAC
concrete scandal).
The series’ George Malone, the
elderly terminally ill trade unionist,
clearly personifies the failing health of
socialism. Nor were the six Boys saints,
all of them taking what work they can
while drawing the state benefits. None
is left with enough to enjoy life,
however, which may explain why, of
the 4,500 letters Bleasdale received
about the series, not one was critical of
his portrayal of Liverpudlians.
Characters, not politics, rule the
series. They are larger than life yet not
caricatures. The last episode features a
brutish man known as “Shake Hands”
who crushes the palms of everyone
who accepts the invitation. The real
Shake Hands “made a small career out
of going round the pubs shaking hands
for a tenner”, Bleasdale says.
Yosser, he says, was a mixture of two
or three people he played football
against and a man legendary among
tarmacers for walking into a café,
ordering three poached eggs on toast
and then smashing them on his head.
Was the name Yosser a nod to the
airman John Yossarian in Catch-22,
one of Bleasdale’s favourite books? It
was not. For reasons he does not
know, all Liverpudlian men surnamed
Hughes were known as Yosser then.
I suggest Yosser was an early
Thatcherite, desperate to become an
entrepreneur. Ill-suited and under-
funded, failure drives him insane.
Perhaps: Graham calls Bleasdale
Britain’s Arthur Miller, so there may
be Death of a Salesman echoes.
Yosser’s madness chimes with
today’s mental health crisis. Bleasdale
says he was on what was yet to be
called the autistic spectrum, although
in the playwright’s early career as a
teacher he recognised the symptoms.
Hill is not expected to attend the
first night. “I don’t think that would be
a good idea for him. Or for the
remarkable actor [Barry Sloane] who’s
playing him,” Bleasdale says.
The play’s “central spine” will not be
Yosser’s story, however, but that of his
friend Chrissie, in the original played
by Michael Angelis, who read a part at
an early workshopping of the play but
died in 2020. “I think the play is a
battle for Chrissie’s soul,” Graham
says. “Basically, is Chrissie going to be
more Yosser or more George? And is
Liverpool going to be more Yosser or
more George?”
Thinking of last year’s TV hit
Sherwood, which explored the
divisions caused by the miners’ strike,
I say Graham’s work, while still
compassionate to all sides, seems to be
becoming more partisan, and more
left-wing. He replies that his faith in
people has not diminished but his faith
in institutions has. “Institutions are
letting us all down,” he says.
Like the regulators, I say, thinking of
our dirty waters. “The regulators are
shit,” Bleasdale says.
Liverpool will be hosting the Labour
conference during the run. Would
Graham like Starmer to come and be
heckled? “I want Starmer to come and
sit and have a pint and watch the show
and then leave with his own answers.”
Graham was awarded the OBE in
2020 yet the state has still to honour
Britain’s Arthur Miller. “I’m in Who’s
Who. I’ve been on Desert Island Discs.
And I’ve done This Is Your Life.
Imagine what that means to the little
ten-year-old kid from Huyton,”
Bleasdale says with no rancour at all.
Boys was followed by his GBH for
Channel 4 in 1991 but the third part of
what he had hoped would be a state of
the nation trilogy, Running Scared, was
cancelled by the BBC soon after it
went into rehearsal “. . . which I think is
pretty unforgivable but I don’t want to
cause a controversy. It happened 20
years ago”. Although he has continued
to work in theatre, Bleasdale’s last TV
production was The Sinking of the
Laconia on BBC2 a dozen years ago.
“I hope I have said how blessed I
have been,” Bleasdale says towards the
end of our conversation, and he means
in his life as well as by his co-writer,
this cast, director and the Royal Court.
I disagree. It is his audiences who have
been blessed, and we are about to be
blessed again.
9
arts
The best thing Radio
4 has done all year
By James
W
hoa. A superbly
intelligent Radio 4
programme on WH
Marriott Auden (full disclosure:
my favourite poet).
I take back all my whingeing about the
more dubious podcasts that pop up on
This deep the BBC Sounds app. Three Faces of
WH Auden is what the BBC is meant
dive into to be. Lord Reith has stopped spinning
in his grave and has slowed to a
Auden’s leisurely rotisserie chicken rotation.
Is any poet more amenable to radio
poetry is than Auden? Certainly no poet has a
better voice: that wise, camp, amused,
what the old-fashioned drawl. I could listen to
nothing else for days. His shorter
poems have that mysterious quality of
BBC should moving you before you understand
exactly what is being said:
be doing “. . . O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart . . .”
podcasts Three Faces of WH Auden is
presented by the poet Michael
Three Faces of Symmons Roberts, whose Lancashire
WH Auden accent is a beautiful contrast with
{{{{{ Auden’s patrician tones. Symmons
Roberts introduces Auden as “one of
the great political poets, one of the
great love poets and one of the great
metaphysical and religious poets” of
the last century. Each of the three
programmes will deal with one of
these aspects. The programme derives
its magic from the fact that Symmons
Roberts loves and understands Auden.
You feel there is nothing he would
rather be doing than making this radio
programme about this poet.
Of Auden’s poetry he says things
like “beautiful”, “breathtaking”, “it
takes the top of my head off”. Yes.
Just how Auden makes me feel too.
Amazingly, all the academics he
talks to seem to actually like Auden.
Rather than droning on about Auden’s
queer identity or finding a reason to
scold him or go on about textual
problems in early editions, they just
say how moved they are by the poems
and why. One says she cried while
reading The Shield of Achilles. Me too.
And miraculously, someone at the
BBC seems to have given Symmons
Roberts a budget. He goes to Austria,
where Auden died, and to the Museé
des Beaux Arts in Brussels to see
Brueghel’s painting Landscape with
the Fall of Icarus, the subject of one
of Auden’s most famous poems.
I remember how at school I
downloaded Auden’s recording of
that poem on to my primitive mobile
phone and paced the playground
with it pressed to my ear, addicted
to those words, that voice. And
Symmons Roberts has dug up tons
I’ve never heard before too. There
are great archive recordings of Auden
recalling his life in Weimar Berlin
before the coming of the Nazis
(“the whole foundations of life were
shaking”) and as an old man
regretting his radical early poems (“a
great deal of the stuff we wrote was
motivated by vanity and a desire to
make an impression”).
It’s not often radio leaves you feeling
uplifted. Even taking into account my
pro-Auden bias, Three Faces of WH
Auden is the best thing Radio 4 has
done this year. Give Symmons Roberts
a microphone and some more dosh,
and let him do another poet.
10
times2
Your weekday brain boost
Every day, Monday to Thursday, a page of extra Sudoku difficult
puzzles to give your brain an extended workout
Samurai medium
Fill each grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9.
Where the puzzles overlap, the rows and columns do not go beyond their usual length.
Suko
Place the numbers 1 to 9 in
the spaces so that the
number in each circle is
equal to the sum of the four
surrounding spaces, and
each colour total is correct
Mini
Sudoku
Fill in the grid so that
every column, every
row and every 3x2
box contains the
digits 1 to 6
Solutions in
Monday’s Times2
Thursday September 21 2023 | the times
More
puzzles
Pages 14-16
Train Tracks
Lay tracks to enable the train to travel
from village A to village B. The numbers
indicate how many sections of track go in
each row and column. There are only
straight sections and curved sections. The
track cannot cross itself.
Killer deadly
Fill the grid so that every column, every row and
every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. Each set of
cells joined by dotted lines must add up to the target
number in its top-left corner. Within each set of cells
Futoshiki
Fill the blank squares so that every row and
joined by dotted lines, a digit cannot be repeated. column contains each of the numbers 1 to 5
once only. The symbols between the squares
indicate whether a number is larger (>) or
smaller (<) than the number next to it.
Solve Times puzzles interactively with
same-day solutions at thetimes.co.uk
Codeword Yesterday’s solutions SUKO MINI
SUDOKU
SAMURAI
Every letter in the
crossword-style grid,
right, is represented by
a number from 1 to 26. TRAIN TRACKS
Each letter of the
alphabet appears in
the grid at least once.
Use the letters already
provided to work out
the identity of further
letters. Enter letters in
the main grid and the
smaller reference grid
until all 26 letters of
FUTOSHIKI
the alphabet have been
accounted for. Proper
nouns are excluded.
SUDOKU KILLER CODEWORD
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 11

television & radio

Do we need to break the law to save the planet?

were some of the insults he read out), holiday. How naive. Because now,
Carol but I admire him. Yet if he’s
considering acts of illegality in protest
obviously, there’s Celebrity Race
Across the World. Of course there is.
Midgley at political inertia over climate change
I suspect he has done things the
wrong way around. Better surely to
Does it work as well as the original,
given that’s about ordinary people
unable to use phones or credit cards
TV review do the law-breaking first using the
element of surprise and broadcast
and relying on the kindness of
strangers, when this lot are already
this afterwards by way of mitigation. famous and Mel Blatt was recognised
But it was an interesting dilemma as a singer from All Saints? Yes and
with which to watch him wrestle, even no. No, because there is always a
if the shots of oil trickling down his performative element with celebrities,
face were needlessly melodramatic. who might tone down the bickering.
Packham felt guilt at being part of a But yes, in that it’s always interesting
generation of conservationists who to see people and their parent/sibling
have “completely failed” to protect interacting. Travelling largely on your
Chris Packham: Is it Time the planet. He invoked Emmeline wits from Marrakesh to Tromso in
to Break the Law? Pankhurst’s “deeds not words”. He Norway is a tall order.
Channel 4 wasn’t advocating blowing up pipelines Emma, the mother of Harry Judd
{{{(( or anything in which people might from McFly, admitted that it “broke
get hurt, but he has reached a point her heart” when he left home to
Celebrity Race Across where he considers law-breaking the become a pop star at 17, because she
the World “ethically responsible thing to do”. missed him. They had a sweet
BBC1 It’s a valid debate, but it sometimes relationship, but that might be tested
{{{(( felt underpowered. Roger Hallam, now they’re in last place.

‘I
s it time to break the law?”
Chris Packham asked in Chris
Packham: Is it Time to Break
the Law? and frankly it would
have been a bit of an anticlimax
if his answer, after all that, had been
“no”. But, after some agonising he
decided it was time because peaceful
activism hasn’t worked and we are
“sleepwalking to an apocalypse”.
Some people dislike Packham
(“tosser”, “dickhead” and “wanker”
co-founder of Extinction Rebellion,
seemed to suggest Packham should
get himself banged up in prison
because “major things” happen when
public figures “lead”. Possibly, but it
could scupper his career at the BBC.
It’s probably why we watched this on
Channel 4.
When I watched Race Across the
World in 2019 I marvelled that here
was a travel show that didn’t involve
celebrities getting paid to go on
The weather presenter Alex
Beresford missed a train because he
hadn’t realised he was in a different
time zone. The racing driver Billy
Monger, who lost both legs in a car
accident, and his sister Bonny are
charmingly positive and the ones to
watch. But a possible secret weapon
is Blatt’s mother, Helene, who trained
in the army, is fluent in French and is
happy to slum it. Her daughter, though,
Chris Packham asked if it was time for “deeds not words” prefers expensive taxis. Who wouldn’t?

Radio choice Times Radio 1.00pm Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert

Joe Clay
Unclassified
Radio 3, 11.30pm
Isobel Waller-Bridge, the
big sister of Phoebe, is a
soundtrack composer of
note, having written scores
for stage and screen,
including Fleabag (a mix of
choir, brass and crunchy
guitars), Black Mirror and
the 2020 RSC production
of The Winter’s Tale. In
tonight’s edition of
Unclassified, Waller-Bridge,
above, is captured in
concert at this year’s
Bluedot festival in
Cheshire, playing piano in
a suite of pieces taken from
last year’s solo album VIII,
as well as a new untitled
work. The episode also
features a performance
from the experimental
electronic music producer
Coby Sey.
our tv newsletter
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5.00am Rosie Wright with Early Breakfast
6.00 Aasmah Mir and Stig Abell with Times
Radio Breakfast 10.00 Matt Chorley 1.00pm
Mariella Frostrup 3.00 Jane Garvey and Fi
Glover 5.00 John Pienaar with Times Radio
Drive. Conversation 7.00 Pienaar and
Friends. Informed debate 8.00 The Evening
Edition with Kait Borsay 10.00 Henry Bonsu
1.00am Stories of Our Times 1.30 Red Box
2.00 Highlights from Times Radio
Radio 2
FM: 88-90.2 MHz
6.30am The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show 9.30
Vernon Kay. Grayson Perry chooses his Tracks
of My Years 12.00 Tina Daheley 2.00pm
Gaby Roslin 4.00 Sara Cox 6.30 Sara Cox’s
Half Wower 7.00 Jo Whiley’s Shiny Happy
Playlist 7.30 Jo Whiley 9.00 The Country
Show with Bob Harris 10.00 Adele Roberts’
Magnificent 7 10.30 Adele Roberts’
Rhythm Nation 12.00 OJ Borg 3.00am
Radio 2 in the Park Live Sets 3.30 Radio 2
in the Park Live Sets 4.00 Wynne Evans
Radio 3
FM: 90.2-92.4 MHz
6.30am Live Breakfast
Petroc Trelawny concludes the Northern
Ireland trip at the tip of Magilligan Point,
where Lough Foyle enters the Atlantic Ocean
9.00 Essential Classics
Georgia Mann plays the best in classical
music with familiar favourites, new finds
and the occasional musical surprise
12.00 Composer of the Week:
Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)
Donald Macleod and Robert Quinney look at
how Pope Urban VIII’s reign fostered a
vibrant period of music in Rome in the early
17th century. Frescobaldi (Toccata no. 10 in D
Minor. E; Arie musicali. Book 2: No. 19.
Vanne, o carta amorosa. Book 2: No. 18. Ti
lascio, anima mia; Toccate, canzone, versi
d’hinni, Magnificat, gagliarde, correnti, Book
2: Ancidetemi pur d’Archadelt passeggiato;
and Arie musicali per cantarsi, Book 1: Così
mi disprezzate, Aria di passacaglia); Stefano
Landi (La morte d’Orfeo, Op. 2: Act I Scene 1:
Teti, del mar regina — Teti, Fato. Act II
Scene 2: Tu lieto canti, Orfeo, e il tempo vola
— Ebro: Orfeo); Jacques Arcadelt (Madrigali,
Book 1: Ahime, dov’è’l bel viso: Madrigali,
Book 1: Ancidetemi pur, grievi martiri);
and Johann Hieronymous Kapsberger
(I pastori di Bettelemme — excerpt)
Performances from the tenor Robin
Tritschler, the baritone James Atkinson and
the mezzo Marta Fontanals-Simmons with
the pianist Simon Lepper from the NI Opera
Festival of Voice 2023. Samuel Barber
(Hermit songs selection); Copland (Nature is
the gentlest mother Heart we will forget
him); Stravinsky (Se tu m’ami from
“Pulcinella”); Clarke (Infant Joy; and The
Seal Man); Bridge (Thy hand in mine; Where
she lies asleep; and Adoration); and
Ravel (Don Quichotte Songs)
2.00 Afternoon Concert
The Ulster Orchestra perform Dvorák’s
Symphony No.8. Plus, Daniel Ottensamer is
the soloist in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with
Camerata Salzburg, a rare performance of
Carl Nielsen’s radiant choral work Hymnus
Amoris from Copenhagen, and more from
Nordic folk trio Dreamer’s Circus. Nielsen
(Maskarade — Overture); Debussy (orch.
Caplet) (Clair de lune); Gipps (Pan and
Apollo); Carr/Busk/Sorenssen (Folk medley);
Smetana (The Bartered Bride — Overture);
Vivaldi: (Cello Sonata in E minor); Schubert
(The Shepherd on the Rock); Dvorák
(Symphony No.8); Mozart (Clarinet
Concerto); Nielsen (Hymnus Amoris); and Lili
Boulanger (D’un matin de printemps) (r)
5.00 In Tune
Pianist Marc-André Hamelin performs live
7.00 Classical Mixtape
A selection of classical favourites mixed with
jazz, folk and music from around the world
7.30 Radio 3 in Concert
Olivier Messiaen’s Éclairs sur l’Au-delà… at
the Salzburg Festival. Ingo Metzmacher
conducts the SWR Symphony Orchestra,
Stuttgart, in the composer’s final
masterpiece. Olivier Messiaen (Éclairs sur
l’Au-Delà… — Lightning Over the Beyond…)
10.00 Free Thinking
Jonathan Coe, Roland Allen and Dr Gill
Partington join Lisa Mullen
10.45 The Essay: Unearthing
Britannia’s Tribes
Mandy Haggith on the voyages of Pytheas (r)
11.00 The Night Tracks Mix
Sara Mohr-Pietsch with a magical sonic
journey for late-night listening
11.30 Unclassified
In the second programme recorded at this
year’s edition of Bluedot Festival, Isobel
Waller-Bridge and Coby Sey take to the stage
at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire
to perform with the BBC Concert Orchestra
conducted by Robert Ames. Elizabeth Alker
presents. See Radio Choice
12.30am Through the Night (r)
Radio 4
FM: 92.4-94.6 MHz LW: 198kHz MW: 720 kHz
5.30am News Briefing
5.43 Prayer for the Day
5.45 Farming Today
5.58 Tweet of the Day (r)
6.00 Today
With Justin Webb and Mishal Husain
8.31 (LW) Yesterday in Parliament
9.00 In Our Time
Debate on the film director Ingmar Bergman
9.45 (LW) Daily Service
9.45 Book of the Week: Material World
By Ed Conway (4/5)
10.00 Woman’s Hour
Magazine exploring issues from a female
perspective, presented by Anita Rani
11.00 Crossing Continents
How the war in Ukraine has changed a
Norwegian town. Last in the series
11.30 Great Lives
Chi-chi Nwanoku picks the American
singer Jessye Norman (8/9) (r)
12.01pm (LW) Shipping Forecast
12.04 You and Yours
12.30 All Consuming
Presented by Charlotte Stavrou and
Amit Katwala. Last in the series
1.00 The World at One
1.45 NatureBang
An examination of how birds learn to sing
2.00 The Archers (r)
2.15 Drama: Radio Waves
By Magdalene Bird, Jack Fairey and Mohsen
Shah. Drama set in 2065 following Captain
Avery Jones on a solo voyage into space, as
she tries to locate extraterrestrial activity
3.00 Ramblings
Clare Balding embarks on a hilly hike in
Cheshire that boasts fantastic views (1/6)
3.27 Radio 4 Appeal
On behalf of Kids Club Kampala (r)
3.30 Open Book
With Anne Enright and Ben Lerner (r)
4.00 Taste
Zakia Sewell ponders the nature of kitsch
with sociologist Ruth Holliday (3/4) (r)
4.30 BBC Inside Science
The latest scientific research
5.00 PM
5.54 (LW) Shipping Forecast
6.00 Six O’Clock News
6.30 My Teenage Diary
Writer Juno Dawson reads from her
pre-transition Brighton diary (4/6)
7.00 The Archers
Fallon makes a decision
7.15 Front Row
Arts programme
8.00 The Briefing Room
Discusses big issues in the news
8.30 Anti-Building with Cedric Price
The life and work of the forward-thinking
architect Cedric Price (r)
9.00 BBC Inside Science
The latest scientific research (r)
9.30 In Our Time (r)
10.00 The World Tonight
10.45 Book at Bedtime:
The Secret Hours
By Mick Herron (4/10)
11.00 Tim Key’s Late Night
Poetry Programme
The comic poet Tim Key broadcasts from
deep within a cave in Austria (3/4) (r)
11.30 One to One
Luke Jones speaks to the theatre
director Simon Godwin (5/5) (r)
11.45 Today in Parliament
12.00 News and Weather
12.30am Book of the Week:
Material World (r)
12.48 Shipping Forecast
1.00 As BBC World Service
Radio 4 Extra
Digital only
8.00am Dad’s Army 8.30 Desmond Olivier
Dingle’s Compleat Life and Works of William
Shakespeare 9.00 Jest a Minute 9.30 A
Whole ’Nother Story 10.00 Westwood 11.00
Paul Temple and the Conrad Case 11.30
Death Speaks Another Language 12.00 How
to Find Home 12.15pm Hester 12.30
Empire-ical Evidence 1.00 Dad’s Army 1.30
Desmond Olivier Dingle’s Compleat Life and
Works of William Shakespeare 2.00 Jest a
Minute 2.30 A Whole ’Nother Story 3.00
Westwood 4.00 Paul Temple and the Conrad
Case 4.30 Death Speaks Another Language
5.00 How to Find Home 5.15 Hester 5.30
Empire-ical Evidence 6.00 Dad’s Army 6.30
Desmond Olivier Dingle’s Compleat Life and
Works of William Shakespeare 7.00 Jest a
Minute 7.30 A Whole ’Nother Story 8.00
Down by the River 9.00 Great Lives. The life
and career of songwriter Hank Williams 9.30
The Long Drop. William Watt takes the stand
in Denise Mina’s reimagining of the trial of
Peter Manuel 9.45 The Dead Hour. Thriller
by Denise Mina 10.00 Comedy Club: My
Teenage Diary. Comedian Amy Gledhill
reminisces about an action-packed summer
in Hull, 2004 10.30 Micky Flanagan: What
Chance Change? The comedian charts his life
during the 1980s 11.00 Hamish and Dougal:
You’ll Have Had Your Tea 11.15 The In
Crowd. Last in the series 11.30 Rigor Mortis
Radio 5 Live
MW: 693, 909
5.00am Wake Up to Money 6.00 5 Live
Breakfast 9.00 Nicky Campbell 11.00 Adrian
Chiles 1.00pm Nihal Arthanayake 4.00
5 Live Drive 7.00 Rugby World Cup 8.00
5 Live Sport: The Euro Leagues Podcast
10.00 Colin Murray 1.00am Dotun Adebayo
talkSPORT
MW: 1053, 1089 kHz
5.00am Early Breakfast 6.00 Breakfast with
Alan Brazil 10.00 Jim White and Simon
Jordan 1.00pm Hawksbee and Baker 4.00
Andy Goldstein and Darren Bent 7.00 Kick
Off 10.00 Sports Bar 1.00am Extra Time
TalkRadio
Digital only
5.00am James Max 6.30 The Julia Hartley-
Brewer Breakfast Show 9.30 Mike and Kev
10.00 Independent Republic of Mike Graham
1.00pm Ian Collins 3.00 Kevin O’Sullivan
5.00 Vanessa Feltz 7.00 Jeremy Kyle 8.00
Piers Morgan Uncensored 10.00 First Edition
11.00 Andre Walker 1.00am Paul Ross
6 Music
Digital only
5.00am Huw Stephens 7.30 Lauren Laverne
10.30 Mary Anne Hobbs 1.00pm Chris
Hawkins 4.00 Steve Lamacq 6.00 Steve
Lamacq’s Roundtable 7.00 New Music Fix
Daily 9.00 6 Music Artist in Residence
10.00 Riley & Coe 12.00 New Music Fix
with Steve Lamacq 1.00am New Music
Fix with Mary Anne Hobbs 2.00 New
Music Fix with Jamz Supernova 3.00 New
Album Fix 4.00 New Music Fix Playlist
Virgin Radio
Digital only
6.30am The Chris Evans Breakfast Show
with cinch 10.00 Eddy Temple-Morris
1.00pm Jayne Middlemiss 4.00 Ricky
Wilson 7.00 Bam 10.00 Amy Voce 1.00am
Sean Goldsmith 4.00 Steve Denyer
Classic FM
FM: 100-102 MHz
6.00am More Music Breakfast 9.00
Alexander Armstrong 12.00 Anne-Marie
Minhall 4.00pm Margherita Taylor 7.00
Smooth Classics at Seven. Presented
by Zeb Soanes 10.00 Calm Classics 1.00am
Bill Overton 4.00 Early Breakfast
12 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

television & radio

Viewing Guide craving the women of tenderness but also first episode begins by years as an emerging antagonist of series
who would feed his cruelty. And his art revealing how his artist in Paris, with art
Crime one (available on
Joe Clay ITVX
creativity. In his art he could be brutal, but he death, in Mougins, critics analysing the ITVX), to justice. But
deconstructed the captured the beauty in France, in 1973, left the evolution of his work, A second series for his sobriety and sanity
Picasso: The female form to the suffering like no other family in turmoil, including the divisive Irvine Welsh’s crime are sorely tested by a
Beauty and the point of abstraction, artist. The series before telling his story 1907 painting Les thriller, with Dougray case that begins with
Beast and in life many women contains rare testimony in chronological order. Demoiselles d’Avignon. Scott returning as DI the attempted murder
BBC2, 9pm were irrevocably from friends and family Born in Malaga, Spain, He meets his first love, Ray Lennox. The of a high-ranking
The Spanish damaged by their and recordings from in 1881, Picasso had a the artist’s model damaged copper is establishment figure
Top artist Pablo association with him. some of his many preternatural talent Fernande Olivier, and ready to return to the at a posh hotel. Down
pickPicasso saw Fifty years after his lovers. Another and was taught to draw starts the pattern of his fray — clean and sober into the seedy
himself as death, this compelling perspective is offered by his father, a painter lifetime when he falls in — after a breakdown underbelly of
the mythological three-part series by artists including Jeff who specialised in love with another induced by childhood Edinburgh goes Ray,
minotaur, half-man and explores the duality of Koons, Julian Schnabel birds. The episode woman, the ballerina trauma and bringing joined by Amanda
half-bull, with the bull a man who was capable and Jenny Saville. The expands on Picasso’s Olga Khokhlova. Mr Confectioner, the (Joanna Vanderham).

BBC1 BBC2 ITV1 Channel 4 Channel 5

6.00am Breakfast 9.15 Morning Live 10.00 Fraud Squad. 6.30am Escape to the Country (r) 7.15 Garden Rescue 6.00am Good Morning Britain 9.00 Lorraine. 6.05am Countdown (r) 6.45 Cheers (r) 7.35 Everybody 6.00am Milkshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine. The broadcaster
Early

The theft of £16million from the taxman by a gang
smuggling alcohol into the UK (AD) 10.45 Claimed and
Shamed. A theme park trip ends in tears 11.15 Homes
Under the Hammer. The team considers auction buys in
Plymouth and West Yorkshire 12.15pm Bargain Hunt.
From the West Midlands Showground in Shrewsbury (r)
(AD) 1.00 BBC News at One; Weather 1.30 BBC Regional
News; Weather 1.45 Doctors. A climate change protestor
blockades Daniel’s golf course (AD) 2.15 Money for
Nothing. Items include an oak serving table and some
splash-back glass (r) 3.00 Escape to the Country. Alistair
Appleton is in Dorset helping two teachers find a country
home where they can raise their young daughters (r) (AD)
3.45 Garden Rescue. In Sheffield, Charlie Dimmock and
Flo Headlam create a garden with a forest feel for a
couple who love to spend time outdoors 4.30 The Finish
Line. Roman Kemp and Sarah Greene host the quiz in
which five contestants race in moving podiums across the
studio floor to try to win £5,000 5.15 Pointless.
Alexander Armstrong hosts (r) 6.00 BBC News at Six;
Weather 6.30 BBC Regional News; Weather
(r) 8.00 Sign Zone: Coastal Defenders (r) (AD, SL) 9.00
Nicky Campbell 10.00 BBC News 12.15pm Politics Live
1.00 Impossible. Rick Edwards hosts the quiz (r) 1.45
Eggheads. Quiz show hosted by Jeremy Vine (r) 2.15
Murder, Mystery and My Family: Case Closed? Barristers
Jeremy Dein and Sasha Wass look back at their
investigation into the case of two men sentenced to
death for the murder of a Liverpool woman in 1951 (r)
(AD) 3.00 Kelvin’s Big Farming Adventure. The Fletchers
enter three sheep into the Ashbourne Show (r) (AD)
3.30 Great Canadian Railway Journeys. Michael Portillo
travels from Miramichi to Quebec City (r) (AD) 4.00
Serengeti. A lioness faces a difficult decision, a baboon
challenges the jealous leader of the troop and a zebra
mother has to cross the river — aware a crocodile is
waiting (r) (AD) 5.00 Flog It! Paul Martin explores Burton
Constable Hall near Hull in Yorkshire (r) 6.00 Richard
Osman’s House of Games. Milton Jones, Ria Lina, Martin
Roberts and Briony May Williams take part (r) 6.30
Marcus Wareing’s Tales from a Kitchen Garden. The chef
considers adding goats to his Sussex smallholding
Entertainment, current affairs and fashion news 10.00
This Morning. Daily magazine, featuring a mix of chat,
showbusiness news, lifestyle features, topical discussion,
health and beauty advice and more. Including Local
Weather 12.30pm Loose Women. The women put the
world to rights once more and invite a guest to chat about
what they are up to 1.30 ITV News; Weather 1.55
Regional News; Weather 2.00 James Martin’s Spanish
Adventure. In Cordoba, James takes a ride on an
eco-friendly tuk tuk and heads to a food market, before
sampling an oxtail dish at a Michelin-starred restaurant
(AD) 3.00 Tenable. A team of five golfing buddies from
Shropshire answer a series of top 10 list questions for the
chance to win £125,000 in the quiz show hosted by
Warwick Davis 4.00 Tipping Point. Ben Shephard hosts
the arcade-themed quiz in which contestants drop tokens
down a choice of four chutes in the hope of winning
a £10,000 jackpot 5.00 The Chase. Bradley Walsh
presents as contestants from Port Talbot, Hertfordshire,
Bristol and Leeds take on one of the Chasers 6.00
Regional News; Weather 6.30 ITV News; Weather
Loves Raymond (r) (AD) 8.25 Frasier (r) (AD) 9.55
Château DIY. At Château de Gere, Trish tries to combat
invading sheep by building a fence (r) (AD) 10.55 George
Clarke’s Amazing Spaces. Projects by younger designers
featured on the show (r) (AD) 11.55 Channel 4 News
Summary 12.00 Steph’s Packed Lunch 2.10pm
Countdown. Chris McCausland is in Dictionary Corner with
Susie Dent 3.00 A Place in the Sun. Laura Hamilton helps
a motorbike enthusiast look for a home on the western
Costa del Sol (r) 4.00 A Place in the Sun. Lee Juggurnauth
jets off to France’s Dordogne region to help house-hunters
find their dream holiday home on a budget of £180,000
5.00 A New Life in the Sun. In Italy, poor weather
threatens to scupper a couple’s paragliding plans. Shaken
and stirred in Spain, a Lancashire pair run a cocktail-
making master class (r) 6.00 The Simpsons. In a parody
of a sporting documentary, Bart goes from delinquent to
star basketball player at Springfield Elementary, but
things go awry when he gets involved with the mafia (r)
(AD) 6.30 Hollyoaks. John Paul starts to have flashbacks
from the attack as he struggles with his trauma (r) (AD)
and guests discuss the issues of the day with co-host
Storm Huntley 11.15 Storm Huntley. Debate on the day’s
talking points continues with the presenter, who takes
viewers calls on the biggest stories 12.40pm Alexis
Conran. The actor, writer and broadcaster examines the
important stories of the day, getting viewers’ opinions on
them 1.40 5 News at Lunchtime 1.45 Home and Away.
Kirby meets with renowned solo artist manager Forrest
Duke, and he makes it clear from the outset that he is
interested in signing her, but there is a catch (r) (AD)
2.15 FILM: Murder in Cherry Springs (PG, TVM,
2021) A reporter returns to her home town to
investigate the unsolved disappearance of her childhood
friend. Mystery starring Rochelle Aytes, Keith D Robinson
and Hanna Lee Sakakibara 4.00 Bargain-Loving Brits in
the Sun. Wayne and Des in Benidorm prepare for
their annual charity calendar once again. And Demi
expands the menu at her business 5.00 5 News at 5
6.00 Susan Calman’s Grand Day Out. The comedian
heads to the south Cornish Coast in her campervan, and
explores the Lizard peninsula (r) 6.55 5 News Update

7.00 The One Show Live magazine show 7.00 The Warship: Tour of Duty On its 7.00 Channel 4 News 7.00 Alexander Armstrong in Sri Lanka
7PM

hosted by Alex Jones and Roman Kemp
7.30 EastEnders Alfie confides in Phil and
Kat panics when only one of them
arrives at the registry office (AD)
way to the far Pacific, HMS Queen
Elizabeth ventures into the eastern
Mediterranean and runs the gauntlet
of hostile Russian warships and fighter
bombers, and there is a tense
stand-off (2/6) (r) (AD)
The presenter embarks on the second
leg of his Sri Lankan adventure,
beginning with a train journey to the
7.30 Emmerdale Gail makes a mysterious mountain town of Haputale (2/3) (r)
phone call and is shaken, and Kim is
delighted with Gabby’s news (AD)
7.55 5 News Update

8.00 Sort Your Life Out with Stacey 8.00 The Hidden World of Hospitality 8.00 Kirstie and Phil’s Love It or List It 8.00 Five-a-Day: The Big Con?
8PM

Solomon The team helps a couple and
their family transform their home with
a life-changing declutter (3/5) (AD)
with Tom Kerridge The chef looks at
how the industry delivers exceptional
service on a huge scale, and he meets
the team behind a large events venue
in Wolverhampton (8/8) (AD)
8.30 Paul O’Grady: For the Love of
Dogs Paul has his work cut out this
time as he meets an elderly chihuahua
with no end of ailments (7/8) (r) (AD)
Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer help a
pair decide whether to renovate their
four-bed one-bathroom house in
Cheshire or sell it and find somewhere
new to call home (5/8) (r) (AD)
Investigating the 20-year-old
government campaign to stop the
national obesity crisis, and how some
producers wrongly exploit it today

9.00 Ambulance An urgent call from 9.00 Picasso: The Beauty and the 9.00 My Mum, Your Dad The romance 9.00 Taskmaster New series. Julian Clary, 9.00 Peter Sellers: The Dark Side of
9PM

someone threatening to use a nerve
agent against the emergency services
leads to major incident standby being
declared. Elsewhere, crewmates are
dispatched to a 75-year-old male who
has been kicked in the head (5/6)
10.00 BBC News at Ten
10PM
Beast New series. An exploration of
the life of Pablo Picasso, beginning
with his years as an emerging artist
in Paris as his renown quickly grows.
See Viewing Guide (1/3) (AD)
10.00 Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone
is ramped up in the retreat, and the
couples are all sent on extravagant
dates where they discuss their journey
so far and plans for the future.
Davina McCall hosts (9/10) (AD)
10.00 ITV News at Ten
Lucy Beaumont, Sam Campbell, Sue
Perkins and Susan Wokoma battle
to win an elaborate joust to become
the 16th Taskmaster champion.
See Viewing Guide (AD)
10.00 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
the Goon An intimate portrait of one
of Britain’s greatest comic actors, with
rare home movie footage of him. Peter
Sellers’ friends recall his obsessions
with his leading ladies, superstitions
and a complicated relationship with his
mother. Plus, contributors including
Nanette Newman, Audrey Nicholson,
Valerie Leon and Charlie Higson

10.30 BBC Regional News and Weather
10.40 Question Time Fiona Bruce presents
the topical debate, inviting a panel of
politicians and other guests in Ipswich
to answer questions from an invited
audience on subjects that have made
11PM
Fishing Bob Mortimer and Paul
Whitehouse travel in style to the
Hampshire Avon (3/6) (r) (AD)
10.30 Newsnight Analysis of the day’s
events with Faisal Islam
10.30 Regional News
10.45 Secrets of the Krays Charting
Ronnie and Reggie Kray’s rise to the
very height of their powers, before it
all came murderously crashing down
with the killing of George Cornell in
Roisin Conaty and Joe Wilkinson
take on Jon Richardson and Nabil
Abdulrashid in the comedy words-
and-numbers quiz. David O’Doherty
is in Dictionary Corner (5/6) (r)
11.05 Sarah Millican: Control Enthusiast
celebrate his multifaceted brilliance.
See Viewing Guide
10.30 A&E After Dark The night staff at
Hull Royal Infirmary battle to save the
sight of a 51-year-old woman who
tripped and impaled her eye on a tent
peg. Plus, a patient is flown in by air
ambulance after falling down a ditch

the headlines over the past week
11.40 Newscast BBC journalists including
Adam Fleming and Chris Mason host a
weekly round-up from Westminster,
delivering the usual mix of serious
analysis and light-hearted gossip about
Late
11.15 Alex Brooker: Disability and Me
The Last Leg presenter confronts what
disability really means in Britain today,
reuniting with a childhood friend and
chatting to Paralympic swimmer Susie
Rodgers about her life (r) (AD)
12.15am Sign Zone: Living Next Door to Putin
the Blind Beggar pub (2/3) (r) (AD)
11.40 My Mum, Your Dad The couples
are all sent on extravagant dates.
Davina McCall hosts (9/10) (r) (AD)
12.30am Extreme E Highlights Action from race one
A stand-up performance, including
topics such as road rage, IBS, her
favourite word and how she lets her
husband know “tonight’s the night” (r)
12.05am Ramsay’s 24 Hours to Hell and Back (r)
in her mobility scooter (3/10) (r)
11.30 Skin A&E A patient has a cyst on his
neck the size of a golf ball, while
another hopes to be rid of the lipoma
that has been attached to her back
for almost 10 years (5/10) (r)
12.30am Police Interceptors Officers stop a car

the biggest stories in politics Katya Adler explores how life is changing for people on
the Russian border (r) (AD, SL) 1.15 Laura Kuenssberg:
State of Chaos. A look at whether UK politics has been
stretched to breaking point (r) (AD, SL) 2.15-4.00
12.15am-6.00 BBC News Strictly Come Dancing. The launch show (r) (AD, SL)
of the Island X-Prix II from Sardinia, as the penultimate
meeting of the campaign got under way 1.25 All Elite
Wrestling: Rampage. Hard-hitting action 2.20 Loose
Women (r) 3.05 Tenable (r) (SL) 3.55 Unwind with ITV
5.05-6.00 Oti Mabuse’s Breakfast Show (r) (SL)
(AD, SL) 12.55 FILM: George Michael — Portrait of
an Artist (15, TVM, 2023) A documentary portrait of
the singer (AD) 2.40 FILM: Gifted (12, 2017) Drama
starring Chris Evans (AD, SL) 4.25 Undercover Boss
USA (r) 5.15-6.05 Couples Come Dine with Me (r)
suspected of being stolen in a keyless theft (r) 1.25
Casino Show. Interactive gambling 3.25 How to Have
a Better Orgasm (r) 4.15 Never Teach Your Wife to
Drive (r) (SL) 5.05 Great Scientists (r) (SL) 5.30
Entertainment News on 5 5.35-6.00 Paw Patrol (r) (SL)
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 13

television & radio

and is seduced by one set by “Little” Alex while touching on his
The Story of of his parents’ friends,
Taskmaster Horne. Every series
Peter Sellers: troubled psyche, this is
Film Cat Ballou
The Graduate Channel 4, 9pm The Dark Side Film4, 2.45pm
Mrs Robinson (Anne has a unique feel, and a standard hagiography
Sky Arts/Now, 8pm of the Goon
Bancroft). “It redefined It’s series 16 and the first impressions here of “one of the most Jane Fonda stars in this
Ian Nathan and his an era,” says Derek latest crop of are good (Campbell Channel 5, 9pm influential comedy amiable musical
crack team of fellow Malcolm, homing in on contestants are Julian will be the breakout The great title suggests performers ever”. western as a teacher
critics cast an adoring how the film depicts Clary, Sue Perkins, star). Clary’s “bum an examination of the Talking heads include seeking revenge after
gaze over The Braddock’s doubts Lucy Beaumont, Susan table” brings the first comedy actor’s tortured his former co-stars her father is murdered
Graduate, Mike about his future. The Wokoma and Sam top marks of the series, soul (he suffered from Valerie Leon and by a metal-nosed killer
Nichols’s bittersweet critics dig deep into the Campbell. They aren’t while the tasks tonight depression and his Nanette Newman, as (Lee Marvin). Cat
1967 movie, which film, from the frisson all household names contain blindfolded former wife Britt well as the usual roll recruits an unlikely
starred Dustin between Hoffman and (yet), but that’s not the shenanigans and wild Ekland described him call (Charlie Higson, band of misfits,
Hoffman as Benjamin Bancroft to its Simon point. The joy resides attempts to get a as “deeply controlling Zoe Lyons et al). It’s including Marvin again,
Braddock, who and Garfunkel-heavy in the wildly differing giant inflatable duck and mentally Sellers, though, so it’s this time as a drunken
graduates from college soundtrack. approaches to the tasks into a lake. unstable”). However, still worth watching. gunfighter. (PG, 1965)

Sky Max
6.00am Supergirl (r) 7.00 DC’s Legends of
Tomorrow (r) (AD) 8.00 The Flash (r) 9.00
Stargate SG-1 (r) 11.00 Supergirl (r) 12.00 The
Flash (r) 1.00pm NCIS: Los Angeles (r) 3.00
Hawaii Five-0 (r) 4.00 S.W.A.T (r) (AD) 5.00
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (r) (AD)
6.00 Stargate SG-1 (r)
7.00 Stargate SG-1. The team are assigned to
investigate the disappearance of SG-9 (r)
8.00 Rob & Romesh vs Drag. The duo dive into
the world of drag queens (r) (AD)
9.00 The Blacklist. Siya learns more
about Meera’s past from Red (r)
10.00 Never Mind the Buzzcocks (r)
10.45 Warrior. Strickland takes menacing
steps to secure Nellie’s land (r)
11.50 Fantasy Island. Tara and Jessica want to
rule their 30th high-school reunion (r)
12.45am Fantasy Island. Helene searches for
her father (r) 1.40 Road Wars (r) 2.05 Stop,
Search, Seize (r) (AD) 3.00 Hawaii Five-0 (r)
4.00 S.W.A.T (r) (AD) 5.00 Highway Patrol (r)
Sky Atlantic
6.00am Urban Secrets (r) 7.55 Six Feet Under
(r) (AD) 10.05 Ray Donovan (r) (AD) 12.15pm
Game of Thrones (r) (AD) 1.20 Raised by
Wolves (r) (AD) 3.30 Six Feet Under (r) (AD)
5.40 Ray Donovan. Two editions (r) (AD)
7.55 Game of Thrones. Arya arrives in Braavos,
while Stannis has a proposal for Jon (r) (AD)
9.00 The Lovers. Seamus’s girlfriend whisks
him away and drags Janet along (3/6) (r)
9.35 Dreamland. A flashback gives an insight
into Mel’s life in Paris and what went wrong,
while back in the present day, Mel and Spence
have a difficult conversation (3/6) (r) (AD)
10.05 Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers
Dynasty. Drama starring John C Reilly (7/7) (r)
11.10 Billions. Chuck wages war on a new front,
while Axe’s plans are threatened (6/12) (r) (AD)
12.20am Billions (r) (AD) 1.30 In Treatment
(r) 2.00 Drift — Partners in Crime. Ali and Leo
sense a chance to catch Maryam’s attacker 4.00
Richard E Grant’s Hotel Secrets (r) (AD) 5.00
Billions. Chuck and Wendy face a family crisis
Sky Documentaries Sky Arts
6.00am Expecting Amy (r) (AD) 7.00
Discovering: Kevin Costner (r) 8.00 The
Directors (r) 9.00 One Shot: The Football Factory
(r) (AD) 10.00 Spector (r) (AD) 11.00 Scouting
For Girls: Fashion’s Darkest Secret (r) (AD)
12.00 FILM: 15 Minutes of Shame (18,
2021) 1.45pm My Icon: Duke McKenzie (r)
(AD) 2.00 FILM: All That Breathes (12,
2022) Documentary 4.00 The Directors (r)
5.00 Discovering: Kevin Costner (r)
6.00 One Shot: The Football Factory (r) (AD)
7.00 Spector. Phil is convicted (4/4) (r) (AD)
8.00 Scouting For Girls: Fashion’s Darkest
Secret. Abuse in fashion (2/3) (r) (AD)
9.00 The Russell Murders: Who Killed Lin and
Megan? Examining the 1996 murders (r)
10.00 FILM: The Bee Gees — How Can
You Mend a Broken Heart (12, 2020)
Documentary exploring the history of the group
12.10am FILM: Nothing Compares (15,
2022) (AD) 2.10 Look Away (r) (AD) 4.00 The
Directors (r) 5.00 Discovering: Kevin Costner (r)
6.00am Gilbert and Sullivan: A Motley Pair
6.30 Beethoven: The Complete Symphonies
7.00 André Rieu: Welcome to My World 8.00
The Joy of Painting 9.00 Tales of the
Unexpected (AD) 10.00 Alfred Hitchcock
Presents 11.00 Discovering: Julia Roberts
12.00 The Joy of Painting 1.00pm Tales of the
Unexpected (AD) 2.00 Renoir — Revered and
Reviled 3.00 The Art of the Garden 4.00
Discovering: Richard Gere 5.00 Tales of the
Unexpected (AD) 6.00 Alfred Hitchcock Presents
7.00 The Joy of Painting. A cabin in snow
7.30 The Joy of Painting. Creating a seascape
8.00 Classic Movies: The Story of The Graduate.
The 1967 romantic drama. See Viewing Guide
9.00 Mildred Pierce. Kate Winslet stars (AD)
10.20 The Directors. The life of Ang Lee
11.20 The Seventies (AD) 12.20am A Brush
with Comedy 2.20 Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly 4.00
Marina Abramovic Takes Over TV 5.00 Inside
Art: Eileen Agar at Whitechapel Gallery 5.30
Inside Art: Linda McCartney Retrospective
Sky Main Event
6.00am Sky Sports News 7.00 Good Morning
Sports Fans 8.00 Good Morning Sports Fans
9.00 Good Morning Sports Fans 10.00 The
Football Show 11.00 The Football Show
12.00 Lunchtime Live 12.30pm Live DP
World Tour Golf: The Open De France. Coverage
of day one at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-
en-Yvelines, where Italy’s Guido Migliozzi
defends his crown 5.00 Live Solheim Cup Golf.
Coverage of the opening ceremony
6.30 Sky Sports News
7.00 Sky Sports News. Round-up of the
sports news, with live analysis and comment
8.00 Sky Sports News
9.00 Sky Sports News
10.00 Sky Sports News at Ten
10.30 Back Pages Tonight
11.00 Sky Sports News
12.00 Live NFL: San Francisco 49ers v New York
Giants (Kick-off 1.15). Coverage of the week
three match at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara,
California 4.30am Sky Sports News
Variations
BBC1 N Ireland
As BBC1 except: 10.40pm The View. News,
comment and analysis from Stormont and
Westminster 11.20 Question Time. Fiona Bruce
hosts the political debate 12.20am Newscast.
A weekly round-up 12.50-6.00 BBC News
BBC1 Scotland
As BBC1 except: 11.15am Bargain Hunt. From
the West Midlands Showground in Shrewsbury
(r) 12.00-1.00pm First Minister’s Questions.
Coverage from the Scottish Parliament
BBC2 N Ireland
As BBC2 except: 10.00pm-10.30 The Long
and the Short of It. Taking a look at the
Act of Union of Britain and Ireland (r)
STV
As ITV1 except: 8.30pm-9.00 Scotland
Tonight: Taggart 40th Anniversary Special.
A look back at the long-running crime drama
Taggart, which launched in 1983 10.30-10.45
STV News 3.55am-5.05 Night Vision. News,
sport and weather from across Scotland

UTV
As ITV1 except: 8.30pm-9.00 UTV Life.
Pamela Ballantine introduces local chat and
music 10.45 Secrets of the Comedy Circuit.
Stand-up comedy from Belfast filmed in front
of a live audience 11.15 Paul O’Grady: For
the Love of Dogs. Paul meets an elderly
chihuahua with numerous ailments (r) (AD)
11.40-12.30am Love Your Garden. Alan
Titchmarsh and the team transform a garden in
the Oxfordshire town of Bicester (r) (AD)

TalkTV
6.00am James Max. An initial insight into the
day’s top stories 6.30 The Julia Hartley-Brewer
Breakfast Show. All the biggest stories to start
the day 9.30 Mike and Kev. Mike Graham and
Kevin O’Sullivan give their unique take on the
front pages and the latest news 10.00 Kevin
O’Sullivan. The host tackles the big stories of
the day 1.00pm Ian Collins. Hard-hitting
monologues and debates 3.00 Peter Cardwell.
The latest news from parliament, featuring
interviews and debate 5.00 Vanessa Feltz. Big
names, interviews, and viewers’ thoughts
on what has got the nation talking
7.00 Jeremy Kyle. The straight-talking host
takes on the issues that really matter
8.00 Piers Morgan Uncensored. The host
presents his verdict on the day’s global events
9.00 The Talk. A panel of famous faces debate
the topics everybody is talking about
10.00 First Edition. An energetic
look at tomorrow’s newspapers
11.00 Piers Morgan Uncensored
12.00 Petrie Hosken 1.00am Jeremy Kyle
2.00 Peter Cardwell 3.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored 4.00 The Talk 5.00 James Max
ITV2
6.00am CITV 9.00 One Tree Hill 10.00
Dawson’s Creek 11.00 Love Bites (AD, SL)
12.00 Dinner Date (AD) 1.00pm Family
Fortunes 2.00 Chuck 3.05 One Tree Hill 4.00
Dawson’s Creek 5.00 Dinner Date (AD)
6.00 Celebrity Catchphrase (AD)
7.00 Family Fortunes. Gino D’Acampo hosts
8.00 Superstore. Staff are asked to take all
purchases straight to customers’ cars (AD)
8.30 Superstore. Sandra and Jonah represent
the staff during contract negotiations (AD)
9.00 Family Guy (AD)
9.30 Family Guy (AD)
10.00 Family Guy (AD)
10.30 Family Guy (AD)
11.00 Family Guy (AD)
11.30 American Dad! (AD)
12.00 American Dad! (AD) 12.30am Superstore
(AD) 1.30 The Sex Lives of College Girls 2.30
Totally Bonkers Guinness World Records. Matt
Edmonds narrates 2.55 Unwind with ITV 3.00
Teleshopping 5.00 The Epic Tales of Captain
Underpants (AD) 5.25 Scooby-Doo! Mystery
Incorporated 5.45 Craig of the Creek
BBC4
7.00pm Great Coastal Railway Journeys.
Michael Portillo reaches the most westerly
station in Wales, on the final leg of his rail
journey along its southern coastline (AD)
7.30 Climbing Great Buildings. Jonathan Foyle
scales the Glasgow School of Art to learn
about the history of the building (AD)
8.00 Hidden Wales with Will Millard. Examining
the history of Wales by exploring forgotten,
secret and usually inaccessible locations,
beginning in the north of the country (1/3)
9.00 FILM: Judgment at Nuremberg (PG,
1962) Fact-based courtroom drama, depicting
the Nuremberg trials, where Nazis instrumental
in crimes against humanity faced the death
penalty. Starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster,
Richard Widmark and Judy Garland (b/w)
11.55 FILM: Tulip Fever (15, 2017) An artist
falls for a married woman while painting her
portrait in Amsterdam during the tulip mania of
the 17th-century. Historical romance starring
Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan and Jack O’Connell
1.30am Great Coastal Railway Journeys (AD)
2.00 Climbing Great Buildings (AD) 2.30-3.30
Hidden Wales with Will Millard (SL)
ITV3
6.00am Classic Emmerdale 7.35 Classic
Coronation Street (AD) 8.05 On the Buses 9.15
Where the Heart Is (AD) 11.35 Heartbeat (AD)
1.40pm Classic Emmerdale 2.45 Classic
Coronation Street (AD) 3.55 Endeavour (AD)
5.55 Heartbeat. Reverend Jacob Thwaite returns
home to find his wife murdered (AD)
6.55 Heartbeat. The officers find themselves
under siege. Jonny Phillips guests (AD)
8.00 Vera. The detective must unravel the
mystery of a man found beaten to death the day
before he was due to testify in court (1/6) (AD)
10.00 Professor T. The academic is called upon
to help investigate the disappearance of a
six-year-old girl, and tensions rise so much
between him and DI Rabbit that they
finally come to blows (4/6) (AD)
11.10 Agatha Christie’s Poirot. A dinner party
proves to be a prelude to murder — but
fortunately Poirot is among the guests,
and soon realises the key to the mystery lies
in a duel fought 10 years previously (AD)
12.10am Where the Heart Is (AD, SL) 2.20
Unwind with ITV 2.30 Teleshopping
Talking Pictures
6.00am The Larkins (b/w) 6.30 FILM: Night
Was Our Friend (PG, 1951) (b/w) 7.45
FILM: Dangerous Cargo (PG, 1954) (b/w)
9.00 Black Saddle (b/w) 9.30 FILM: Band of
Thieves (U, 1962) (b/w) 10.50 Men Against
the Sea 11.10 FILM: Gert & Daisy’s
Weekend (U, 1941) (b/w) 12.45pm FILM:
The Undercover Man (PG, 1949) Crime
thriller starring Glenn Ford (b/w) 2.30 Crown
Court 3.00 FILM: White Cradle Inn (PG,
1947) Drama starring Madeleine Carroll (b/w)
4.40 FILM: Blackout (PG, 1950) Crime drama
with Maxwell Reed and Dinah Sheridan (b/w)
6.05 FILM: The Man in the Sky (U, 1957)
Drama starring Jack Hawkins (b/w)
7.50 Look at Life. The fashion industry
8.00 The Saint (7/9) (b/w)
9.00 Rumpole of the Bailey (4/6)
10.05 FILM: Spring and Port Wine (PG,
1970) Drama starring James Mason
12.05am FILM: The Killer is Loose (PG,
1956) Thriller with Joseph Cotten (b/w) 1.35
FILM: Tickle Me (U, 1965) 3.25 FILM: Up
with the Lark (U, 1943) (b/w) 4.35 FILM:
Cloak Without Dagger (U, 1956) (b/w)
ITV4
6.00am Nijinsky’s Triple Crown 6.05 Minder
(AD, SL) 7.05 The Professionals (AD, SL) 8.15
The Saint 9.20 The Return of Sherlock Holmes
(AD) 10.35 Magnum, PI 11.40 The Motorbike
Show 12.40pm The Saint 1.45 The Return of
Sherlock Holmes (AD) 2.55 Magnum, PI 4.00
Made in Britain (AD) 4.30 English Football
League Highlights 5.30 River Monsters
6.05 Great World Cup Goals
6.10 Rugby World Cup’s Greatest Tries. A look at
some of the tournament’s memorable tries
7.15 Live Rugby World Cup 2023: France v
Namibia (Kick-off 8.00). All the action from the
Pool A encounter at Stade de Marseille in France
10.30 FILM: Mad Max Beyond
Thunderdome (15, 1985) The nomadic
warrior makes a bad deal with a desert dictator
and ends up an unlikely protector of a band
of feral children. Sci-fi adventure sequel
starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner (AD)
12.40am The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Moriarty and Holmes fight their final battle
(AD) 1.45 The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
Period drama (AD, SL) 3.00 Teleshopping
Film4
11.00am At Gunpoint (U, 1955) Western
starring Fred MacMurray 12.40pm 23 Paces
to Baker Street (PG, 1956) Thriller with
Van Johnson (AD)
2.45 Cat Ballou (PG, 1965) Musical comedy
Western starring Jane Fonda. See Viewing
Guide (AD)
4.40 Earth vs the Flying Saucers (U, 1956)
Sci-fi drama with Hugh Marlowe (b/w)
6.20 A Knight’s Tale (PG, 2001) A squire
poses as a knight to take part in jousting
tournaments. Comedy adventure with Heath
Ledger and Paul Bettany (AD)
9.00 Fantasy Island (15, 2020) Dreams turn
into nightmares on a magical island resort.
Horror comedy starring Michael Peña
11.10 Daredevil (15, 2003) A blind attorney
leads a double life as a vigilante fighting evil
in New York. Comic-book adventure with Ben
Affleck, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Garner
1.15am-3.55 Last Action Hero (PG, 1993)
A boy watching an action movie is transported
into the film, while its screen villain escapes
into the real world. Comedy adventure with
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Austin O’Brien (AD)
Drama
6.00am Teleshopping 7.10 All Creatures Great
and Small 8.00 Doctors 9.20 Classic Holby City
10.40 Casualty 11.50 The Bill 1.20pm Classic
EastEnders 2.00 Pie in the Sky 3.00 Bergerac
4.15 All Creatures Great and Small 5.30 The
Upper Hand. Tom has an accident at school
6.05 ’Allo ’Allo! The spy camera sent from
London has fallen into a vineyard
6.40 Last of the Summer Wine. The trio
try to draw Gough away from his wife
7.20 Last of the Summer Wine. A child’s kite
inspires Seymour to create his own giant version
8.00 Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private
Investigators. Frank and Lu investigate a
missing person case at a casino (AD)
9.00 Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private
Investigators. Frank and Luella must work out
what happened to an amnesiac (AD)
10.00 New Tricks. The team re-examines
a zookeeper’s death (10/10) (AD)
11.20 Silent Witness. A shocking incident
brings back painful memories for Jack
1.35am Banished. Period drama (AD) 2.55
Classic Holby City (SL) 4.00 Teleshopping
More4
8.55am Food Unwrapped 9.15 A Place in the
Sun 10.05 A New Life in the Sun 11.05 Find It,
Fix It, Flog It 1.10pm Heir Hunters 2.10 Four in
a Bed 4.50 Kirstie and Phil’s Love It or List It
(AD) 5.50 The Secret Life of the Zoo (AD)
6.55 The Dog House. An 85-year-old
admires a stubborn beagle (AD)
7.55 Grand Designs. A GP and his wife, an
alternative medicine practitioner, have decided
to build a home at the bottom of their garden,
but cannot agree on the design (3/10) (AD)
9.00 24 Hours in Police Custody. CID detective
Dave Brecknock investigates a burglary at
a country estate in which antiques worth
£250,000 have been reported stolen
10.00 24 Hours in A&E. A 40-year-old man is
rushed in after losing control of his car, a woman
has an infected cyst and a retired doctor is
brought in following a horse-riding accident (AD)
11.05 Emergency Helicopter Medics: Late Night
Emergencies. The victim of a stabbing
needs urgent medical attention (AD)
12.05am 24 Hours in Police Custody 1.10 999:
On the Front Line 2.15 24 Hours in A&E (AD)
3.20-3.50 A Place in the Sun
Yesterday
6.10am Sounds of the Seventies 7.15
Impossible Engineering (AD) 8.00 Abandoned
Engineering (AD) 10.00 Secret Nazi Bases
11.00 Narrow Escapes of World War II (AD)
12.00 Great Continental Railway Journeys
1.00pm Antiques Roadshow 2.00 Bangers &
Cash 4.00 World War Weird 5.00 Secret Nazi
Bases. Nazi bunkers buried in the Hague tells
the story of the greatest battle that never was
6.00 Great British Railway Journeys
7.00 Antiques Roadshow. Fiona Bruce hosts the
show from Floors Castle in southeast Scotland
8.00 Bangers & Cash. A 1924 Rover 9 that has
been in the same family since the 1950s (AD)
9.00 Bangers & Cash: Restoring Classics.
A sun-bleached red Vauxhall Astra GTE
gives the team a headache (AD)
10.00 Bangers & Cash. A 1952 Jowett Javelin
finds an unexpected home (3/10)
11.00 Abandoned Engineering. Exploring a
luxury resort in Argentina (7/12) (AD)
12.00 Great British Railway Journeys
1.00am Railway Murders 2.00 Sounds
of the Seventies 3.00 Teleshopping
BBC Scotland
7.00pm The Disasters That Shocked Scotland
(r) 7.30 The Great Food Guys (r) (AD) 8.00
Beechgrove Garden 8.30 Landward 9.00
The Nine 10.00 Scot Squad (r) (AD) 10.30
Gary: Tank Commander (r) 11.00 Two Doors
Down (r) (AD) 11.30-12.00 Mirror Mirror (r)
BBC Alba
6.00am Alba Today 5.00pm Sionnach agus
Maigheach (Fox & Hare) (r) 5.15 Rita is Crogall
(r) 5.20 Oscar & Ealasaid (r) 5.35 ’S E Iasg a
Th’Annam (I’m a Fish) (r) 5.40 Shane an Chef
(r) 5.50 Nannag a’ Noo/Huggleboo (r) 5.55
Stòiridh (r) 6.00 An Saoghal Droil aig Pol Ploc/
The Rubbish World of Dave Spud (r) 6.15 @12
(r) 6.20 Triuir aig Tri (r) 6.35 Stri (r) 6.45
Proiseact Ploigh (r) 7.00 Clann a’ Chogaidh
Mhoir (Small Hands in a Big War) (r) 7.25 Dàn
(r) 7.30 SpeakGaelic (r) 8.00 An Là (News)
8.30 Cidsin Granaidh Chalanais (r) 9.00
Everest: An Slighe Mhairbhteach 9.50
Fraochy Bay (r) 9.55 Dhan Uisge (r) 10.00
Mach à Seo! 10.30 Tannadice ’87 (r) 11.30
Glan Fhein (r) 12.00-6.00am Alba Today
S4C
6.00am Cyw: Olobobs (r) 6.05 Gwdihw (r)
6.20 Pablo (r) 6.35 Odo (r) 6.45 Ahoi! (r) 7.00
Sblij a Sbloj (r) 7.10 Sam Tân (r) 7.20 Caru
Canu a Stori (r) 7.30 Blero yn Mynd i Ocido (r)
7.45 Kim a Cêt a Twrch (r) 8.00 Cywion Bach
(r) 8.05 Halibalw (r) 8.15 Bing (r) 8.25 Guto
Gwningen (r) 8.40 Llan-ar-goll-en (r) 8.55 Og
y Draenog Hapus (r) 9.05 Stiw (r) 9.15 Yr
Ysgol (r) 9.30 Sion y Chef (r) 9.45 Sbarc (r)
10.00 Olobobs (r) 10.05 Gwdihw (r) 10.20
Pablo (r) 10.35 Odo (r) 10.45 Ahoi! (r) 11.00
Sblij a Sbloj (r) 11.10 Sam Tân (r) 11.20 Caru
Canu a Stori (r) 11.30 Blero yn Mynd i Ocido
(r) 11.45 Kim a Cêt a Twrch (r) 12.00 News;
Weather 12.05pm Bwrdd i Dri (r) 12.30 Heno
(r) 1.00 Cerys Matthews a’r Goeden Faled (r)
(AD) 1.30 Y Byd ar Bedwar (r) 2.00 News;
Weather 2.05 Prynhawn Da 3.00 News;
Weather 3.05 Mike Phillips: Croeso i Dubai (r)
4.00 Awr Fawr: Caru Canu a Stori (r) 4.10 Og y
Draenog Hapus (r) 4.20 Sion y Chef (r) 4.30
Blero yn Mynd i Ocido (r) 4.45 Kim a Cêt a
Twrch (r) 5.00 Stwnsh: Arthur a Chriw y Ford
Gron (r) 5.15 Byd Rwtsh Dai Potsh (r) 5.25 Y
Goleudy (r) (AD) 5.50 Wariars (r) 6.00 Cefn
Gwlad (r) (AD) 6.30 Pen/Campwyr (r) 6.57
News 7.00 Heno (r) 7.30 News; Weather 8.00
Pobol y Cwm (AD) 8.25 Rownd a Rownd (AD)
8.55 News; Weather 9.00 Jonathan: Cwpan y
Byd 2023. A look ahead to Wales’ next World
Cup match 10.00 Gwyliau ’23. Heledd Watkins
presents musical highlights from various
festivals 11.00-11.35 Ar Werth (r) (AD)
 14 Thursday September 21 2023 | the times

MindGames
Tetonor Tricky No 398 Codeword No 5012 Train Tracks No 2045

60 26 80 33

25 60 90
26 20 33 15
80

25 90 20 15
23 21 50 32
23 21 50 32
44 44 96
96 24
24 100
100
Lay tracks to enable the train to travel from village A to village
B. The numbers indicate how many sections of track go in
1 12 2 2 32 3 5 5 10
10 16 16 30 30 each row and column. There are only straight sections and
curved sections. The track cannot cross itself.

When complete, the strip below the grid can be split into eight pairs of
numbers. Adding the numbers in a pair gives one of the 16 numbers in
the grid. Multiplying them gives a different number in the grid. For Quintagram® Challenge
example, a 4 and 6 in the strip could be paired to make 10 (4+6) and 24
Solve all five cryptic clues using each
your mind
(4x6) in the grid. Enter each sum below the corresponding number in the Solveunderneath
all five cryptic
grid. The blanks in the strip must be deduced, bearing in mind the letter onceclues
only using with puzzle
each letter underneath once only books from
numbers are listed in ascending order.
1 Confusion in assembly recalled (4) The Times
The next Tetonor puzzle will appear on Tuesday
Every letter in this crossword-style grid is represented by a number from 1 to 26.
Each letter of the alphabet appears in the grid at least once. Use the letters already -2 Bold
- reminder
- - to acquire uniform
provided to work out the identity of further letters. Enter letters in the main grid
and the smaller reference grid until all 26 letters of the alphabet have been (5)
accounted for. Proper nouns are excluded. Yesterday’s solution, right
For more puzzles, including -3 Tried
- returning
- - -as politician, under
Cluelines Stuck on Codeword? To receive 4 random clues call 0901 293 6262 or
Mini Sudoku, extra Codeword, text TIMECODE to 64343. Calls cost £1 plus your telephone company’s network
access charge. Texts cost £1 plus your standard network charge. For the full solution
escort (7)

Train Tracks and Futoshiki call 0905 757 0142. Calls cost £1 per minute plus your telephone company’s network
access charge. SP: Spoke, 0333 202 3390 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5.30pm).
-4 Bronwen
- - -unexpectedly
- - - arrived
go to page 10 very recently (7)
Lexica No 7057 No 7058
-5 Ruin
- penny
- -publication:
- - - right to
S I U M F B R S N C E block that (9)
Winning Move
D A ---------
Black to play. A B D D D E E E
This position is from Dreelinck- A S E L
Bosboom, Geraardsbergen 2023. E I I L M M N N
G H A O N O O O P P P R
The opening of this game was thetimes.co.uk/
the King’s Indian Defence (1 d4 Y A H U R R S S S T U W bookshop
Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 Nc3 Bg7 4 e4 d6),
a double-edged line where Black C C L
concedes space but hopes to
undermine the white structure in
the middlegame. Sometimes this
Y N E X What are your favourite
plan goes wrong and Black gets
sat upon. Sometimes, as here,
White overreaches and it works
K S H N E R O H A L
puzzles in MindGames?
well. How did Black conclude?
Slide the letters either horizontally or vertically back into the grid to produce a
completed crossword. Letters are allowed to slide over other letters Email: puzzles@thetimes.co.uk
KenKen Difficult No 6004 Futoshiki No 4569 Kakuro No 3528

Fill the grid

using the
numbers 1 to 9
only. The
numbers in each
horizontal or
vertical run of
white squares
add up to the
total in the
triangle to its left
or above it. The
same number
may occur more
than once in a
row or column,
but not within
the same run of
white squares.

All the digits 1 to 6 must appear in every row and column. In Fill the blank squares so that every row and column contains
each thick-line “block”, the target number in the top left-hand each of the numbers 1 to 5 once only. The symbols between
corner is calculated from the digits in all the cells in the block, the squares indicate whether a number is larger (>) or smaller
using the operation indicated by the symbol. (<) than the number next to it.
the times | Thursday September 21 2023 15

MindGames
times2 Crossword No 9328 Brain Trainer Cell Blocks No 4895
Just follow the instructions from left to right, starting with the number given to reach an answer at the end.
Divide the grid

ANSWER ANSWER ANSWER

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
into square or
EASY 26 + 9 x 2 + 8 1/2
OF IT
–8 x3 –5 ÷4 +7 rectangular
blocks, each
containing one
8 9 digit only. Every
block must
MEDIUM 131 x 6 – 98 + 1/2 – 88 75% + 67 80% + 75 + 1/5 contain the
OF IT OF IT OF IT OF IT number of cells
indicated by the
10 11 12 13
digit inside it.

14
HARDER 156 x 7 + 358 90% x 3 – 559 + 1/2 + 542 + 1/2 – 187
OF IT OF IT OF IT
15

Polygon Set Square No 3531

16 17
From these letters, make words of Enter each of
18 four or more letters, always including the numbers
the central letter. Answers must be in from 1 to 9 in
19 20 21 the Concise Oxford Dictionary, excluding the grid, so that
capitalised words, plurals, conjugated the six sums
verbs (past tense etc), adverbs ending work. We’ve
in LY, comparatives and superlatives. placed two
How you rate 9 words, average; numbers to get
22 23
12, good; 15, very good; 18, excellent you started.
Each sum
Yesterday’s answers should be
Across 16 Flood defence (4) calculated left
filer, fire, flier, furl, fusilier, ireful, irie,
1 Waver indecisively (6) 17 Roundabout route (6) iris, lifer, lure, riel, rife, rifle, rile, rise, rule,
to right or top
5 Ecclesiastical post (6) 19 Trigger (an explosive) (8) to bottom.
ruse, serf, serif, sire, slur, suer, sure, surf,
8 Moist (4) 21 Fees for membership etc (4) surfie, user
9 Demise (8) 22 Maiden (6)
Please note, BODMAS does not apply
10 Banish (rumours or 23 Relegate (6)
misconceptions, eg) (6)
12 Prescribed amount (4) Down Killer Gentle No 9079 Solutions
15 Set of crockery (6,7) 2 Powerlessness (9)
Quick Cryptic 2487 Codeword 5011 Kakuro 3527
3 Pelvic area (3)
Solution to Crossword 9327
4 Emergency warning (3,5)
P I NCH W A F 5 Daybreak (4)
R E E H A L LWA Y
6 Legal declaration made
OU TRAGE K N
N T T TRUANCY under oath (9)
GO L DEN A L L 7 Nocturnal bird (3)
E DE L I C I OUS 11 Lumbering (9)
T A L B 13 Juicy, luscious (9)
BE E F S T EAK F 14 Remove wilted flowers
D I E T OMA T O from (a plant) (8)
D I SBAND W R U 18 Fall short of a pass mark (4) Train Tracks 2044
O U A T T EMP T 20 Seventh Greek letter (3) Sudoku 14,335
BU I L DER O E E 21 Poorly lit (3)
S A E WO R L D
Need help with today’s puzzle? Call 0905 757 0143 to check the
answers. Calls cost £1 per minute plus your telephone company’s
network access charge. SP: Spoke, 0333 202 3390 (Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm).

Bridge Andrew Robson

There was a subtle defensive point Sudoku 14,336

Dealer: North, Vulnerability: Both
on today’s 4♥ from the 13th ♠ AQ 5 Cell Blocks 4894 Set Square 3530 Lexica 7055
Teams Advanced
World Transnational Open Teams ♥ Q 10 7 6 5 3 P
in Marrakesh, which took place ♦4
late last month, shortly before the
♠ 63 ♣J 7 4 ♠ 10 7 4 2
Killer Tough No 9080 S O A P Y

tragic earthquake. ♥8 2 N S R
Sitting West, you lead the queen W E
♥A K 4
♦Q J 6 2 S ♦K 10 8 7 S H O U T
of diamonds, declarer winning the ♣A 10 5 3 2 ♣8 6 N
ace and leading the jack of hearts. ♠ KJ98
Your partner wins and switches to ♥J 9 C A L L E R

the eight of clubs. Do you win the ♦A 9 5 3

ace and try to give partner a ruff, ♣KQ 9 Sudoku 14,337 Futoshiki 4568 KenKen 6003 Lexica 7056
playing for him to have switched S W N E
S S
to a singleton? Or do you duck, Pass(1) Pass
playing for him to have led a dou- 1NT(2) Pass 2♦(3) Pass H O P A

bleton, hoping subsequently to win 2♥ (3) Pass 4♥ End A R L

partner’s second club and give him (1) Some would gamble a weak 2♥ opener F O O D A
a third-round ruff? but there are good reasons not to. You are
T V R
You’ll note that I said, some- vulnerable, your hearts are poor and you have
what vaguely, “Your partner wins too much playability for spades (have you W E A R Y

and switches to the eight of clubs.”
I did not specify whether partner
won the king or the ace of hearts.
And that is the crucial point.
If East won the king of hearts, it
is clear he has ♥ AKx (declarer
would hardly have played hearts
this way if he held ♥ AJ(x) in hand
— he’d have crossed to dummy
and taken a finesse). If East won
the king, you should play him for a
doubleton club, ducking the first
round, as you know he’ll win the
ace next time, enabling you to give
him his third-round ruff.
Ducking is the winning defence
on the actual deal. Declarer is
allowed to win the first club and
leads a second heart. East then
wins the ace and leads his six of
clubs, you winning the ace this
time and giving partner the desired
third-round ruff. One down.
The elegant corollary of the sit-
uation is that if East has ♥ AKx
ever opened 2♥ and watched dummy table
♠ KJ10xx and a small singleton heart?). Today’s solutions
(2) North-South were playing a mid-range
1NT opener, 14-16. This is a logical method Killer 9077 Concise Cryptic Suko 3913 Brain
among those partnerships who like to open
Quintagram Quintagram Trainer
balanced 11-counts (meaning that the 1NT
rebid is 11-13, the ideal three-point range).
1 Lard 1 Mess Easy 29
2 Dives 2 Proud Medium 834
(3) Transfer to hearts, dutifully completed. 3 Adroit 3 Sampled Harder 8,177
4 Function 4 Newborn
Contract: 4♥ , Opening Lead: ♦Q
5 Malformed 5 Perdition
and a singleton club, he should
win not the normal cheaper king Word watch Quiz
of hearts from ace-king but the
Hiccatee (a) A freshwater 1 France 2 Horror
ace. Now West is forced to play his tortoise of the Caribbean 3 Goldfinger 4 Alastair
partner for a singleton club, as (Collins)
Killer 9078 Bishop (a) To tamper with a Campbell 5 Green beret
ducking cannot work (declarer As with standard Sudoku, fill the grid so that every column, horse’s teeth to make it seem 6 Porridge 7 Leonard
presumably has ♥ KJ(x) and is every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. Each set younger (Chambers) Bernstein 8 “Let them hate
about to draw trumps if you duck). Pretergress (c) To go
of cells joined by dotted lines must add up to the target number so long as they fear” 9 Scout
The same principle applies if (as in its top-left corner. Within each set of cells joined by dotted
beyond (OED)
happened at one English table) Chess — Winning Move
rally 10 Reckitt Benckiser
lines, a digit cannot be repeated. 11 Henry Vaughan 12 Foxes,
West leads a heart at trick one. 1 ... Qxf2+! 2 Kxf2 Nxe4+
Here, East should win the king and the stage name of Louisa
3 Ke1 Nxc3 leaves Black a
West should duck East’s eight of Cluelines Stuck on Sudoku, Killer or KenKen? Call 0901 293 rook up Rose Allen 13 Trostre
clubs switch. With a singleton club, 6263 before midnight to receive four clues for any of today’s Tinplate Works aka Trostre
East should win the ace of hearts. puzzles. Calls cost £1 plus your telephone company’s network Steelworks 14 Simona Halep
andrew.robson@thetimes.co.uk access charge. SP: Spoke, 0333 202 3390 (Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm). 15 Elk or moose (Alces alces)
 21.09.23

For extra
puzzles
See page 10

Word watch Sudoku Mild No 14,338 Fiendish No 14,339 Super fiendish No 14,340
David Parfitt

Hiccatee
a A freshwater tortoise
b An involuntary giggle
c A tree producing
pecan nuts

Bishop
a To tamper with a
horse’s teeth
b To move diagonally
c An unfortunate
accident

Pretergress
a A female church
attendant
b To ready oneself
c To go beyond
Answers on page 15

Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9.

The Times Daily Quiz Olav Bjortomt Suko No 3913

1 In 1962, Algeria gained Gaviscon, Nurofen,

its independence from
which European country?
2 The Bram Stoker
Awards honour writers
in which genre?
3 The climax of which
James Bond film takes
place at the US Bullion
Depository at Fort Knox?
4 The podcast The
Rest is Politics is hosted
by Rory Stewart and
which former Labour
spin doctor?
5 Which beret was
described by John F
Kennedy as “a mark of
distinction in the fight
for freedom”?
6 Set at Alamesa
minimum security
prison, On the Rocks was
15
a 1975-76 US remake of
which British sitcom?
7 Which American
conductor and
composer married
the Costa Rican-
born actress Felicia
Montealegre in 1951?
8 A saying associated
with the Roman
emperor Caligula,
what does Oderint dum
metuant mean?
9 Which type of
rally was first held
in Crystal Palace on
September 4, 1909?
10 Formed by a 1999
merger, which company
owns the brands
Harpic and Veet?
11 Which Welsh
metaphysical poet wrote
the prose work Mount
of Olives: or, Solitary
Devotions (1652)?
12 Which British singer
features on the Russian-
German DJ Zedd’s 2012
single Clarity?
13 Located just outside
Llanelli, which facility
makes all of Britain’s
tinplate?
14 Which Romanian
tennis player won the
2018 French Open Place the numbers 1 to 9 in the spaces so
and 2019 Wimbledon that the number in each circle is equal to
women’s singles titles? the sum of the four surrounding spaces,
and each colour total is correct
15 Which deer species
is this? For interactive puzzles visit
Answers on page 15 thetimes.co.uk

The Times Quick Cryptic No 2488 by Myles

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Across Down
1 Escargots? Certainly not! (4,4) 1 Part of course that’s just
5 What sounds like distress call fashion (7)
from rider to stop (4) 2 Drunk also swallowing very
8 9 8 Handle badly — this round’s many shots (5)
on me? (3-5) 3 Spotlight pro, say, on game of
9 Finishes off the music with no golf (10)
10
repetition of sound (4) 4 Person making deliveries from
11 Grown improperly, right? On part of laboratory (6)
11 12 the contrary (5) 6 Journalist understood tool for
12 Monitor where bishop has cutting (7)
authority (7) 7 A flower got from bed (5)
13 Like canary or chicken (6) 10 Lead, for example, one kind of
13 14 15 16 15 Audibly, what could be you or band (5,5)
I making assertion (6) 14 Apprentice, one who’s being
17 18 Something racehorse needs, a paid under pound (7)
kind of shoe (7) 16 Awfully valiant citizen of
18 19 20 19 Power and will possibly (5) Northern Europe (7)
21 Footballer on one side or 17 Bright article found in sea (6)
another (4) 18 Namely, what to do with
22 Tours all over the place, broken-down car (2,3)
21 22
surrounded by seven experts 20 Carefully prepare man starting
(8) union (5)
23 Revolutionary act or
performance on stage (4)
24 In revised order, cancel my
23 24 plant (8)
Yesterday’s solution on page 15
 Thursday September 21, 2023

Turning
the
Bringing our oceans
tide
back to health
2
Restoring the oceans
So long, all the fish? The state
Campaigners are taking legal action against the
government for setting fishing quotas too high and
‘squandering’ stocks in UK waters, says Ben Cooke
T
hroughout the UK’s waters overfishing is
driving many species into steep decline,
and Charles Clover believes the blame
can be laid squarely at the feet of the
government. “It’s been squandering fish
assets for a long time,” he says. Having
covered overfishing as environment
editor of The Daily Telegraph between 1987 and 2008,
in 2010 Clover took the decision to combat it by co-
founding the Blue Marine Foundation, a charity
campaigning for ocean conservation.
The Times can reveal that the foundation has begun
legal action against the government for setting fishing
quotas higher than scientific advice. The campaigners
hope to get the government to admit that, in so doing,
it is breaching its legal duty to conserve fish stocks.
Clover argues that it is the job of government to
“restrain the fishing industry from annihilating the
wild fish and shellfish on which it depends”, and that
for decades it has been failing. “There are, for example,
five populations of cod in UK waters, and four of them
are depressingly close to collapse. The worst, the west
of Scotland cod, has been fished over scientific advice
year on year for the past 35 years. The last landings of
UK FISH STOCK
Sustainably fished
Overfished
Data limited
Unknown
Source: Oceana
whitefish in the Clyde were exactly two decades ago.”
A report by the marine conservation charity Oceana
last week set out the extent of overfishing in UK
waters. Assessing 104 British fish stocks, it found that
34 per cent were overfished, while 45 per cent were
fished sustainably (the rest could not be assessed
because of a lack of data). It also found that only 41 per
cent of these populations were of a healthy size, while
25 per cent were “in a critical condition”.
The report concluded that “this worrying situation is
being driven by the government setting catch limits too
high — exceeding scientific advice”.
Each year, the government negotiates catch limits
with the countries that share its fisheries. These
include Norway, Iceland and Russia, but the UK’s main
negotiating partner is the EU. The negotiations, which
conclude each year in December, are informed by
scientific advice from the International Council for the
Exploration of the Sea (Ices), outlining how many fish
can be taken from the ocean without their numbers
falling to dangerously low levels.
But Ices’s advice is not always followed. In fact, in
February, the government’s advisers at the Centre for
Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science found
that 57 per cent of the catch limits agreed for this year
were out of line with Ices’s recommendations.
Clover alleges that the recurrent mismatch between
the advice and the negotiated catch limits is due to
lobbying by the fishing industry. He says the
government accedes to industry demand for higher
limits because it is “scared of any headline that implies
57%
of catch limits for this
year were set above
scientific advice
45%
34%
16%
5%
loss of revenue for the fishing fleet”. Mike Cohen, the
chief executive of the National Federation of
Fishermen’s Organisations Mike Cohen disputes this,
saying that “the idea that the fishing industry exercises
any sort of control over government policy is entirely
fanciful. Industry makes comments, just as
environmental lobbyists do, and governments take
decisions. I have never noticed them being overly
sensitive about our feelings towards the results.”
After soliciting industry advice, Clover says, the
government “tells the EU what its bottom line is, and
that will include the number of fish stocks it wants to
overfish. Normally in a negotiation you keep your
cards close to your chest but in this instance you tell
the opposite side what you want, because actually, both
sides will want to overfish a bit.”
The environmental legal charity ClientEarth has
taken legal action against the European Council in the
European Court, challenging its failure to set catch
limits in line with scientific advice.
On July 5, the Blue Marine Foundation took the
same fight to the government, sending a “pre-action
protocol” letter setting out the grounds on which it
believes the government is obliged to admit that it is
setting catch limits illegally. If the government does not
agree, the foundation will begin legal proceedings by
mid-January. The foundation is challenging the
government on the catch limits it has set for cod in the
English Channel and Celtic Seas, lemon sole and witch
in the North Sea, whiting in the Irish Sea and whiting
in the North Sea and west of Scotland.
the times
Thursday September 21, 2023
ARE OUR FISH DISAPPEARING?
The UK's fisheries production has declined, with only
700,242 metric tonnes collected in 2018
1.2m
1.1
1 along the
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Source: Our World in Data
of our waters
The foundation argues that, in setting catch limits
for these species higher than the Ices advice, the
government is in breach of the 2020 Fisheries Act,
which requires it to “aim to fish within sustainable
limits based on the best available scientific advice”.
The Fisheries Act sets out eight objectives the
government must aim to fulfil in managing fisheries,
including sustainability and economic benefit. It allows
for some of these objectives to be compromised in
favour of others but requires the government to
explain its reasons for doing so.
The foundation claims that the government has
breached the act by not publicly explaining its
rationale for not following scientific advice about how
high to set the catch limits for these four species.
Tom Appleby, the foundation’s chief legal affairs
adviser, says: “When we asked the government for its
positions regarding fisheries negotiations they refused
to give us anything, and we only had a few lines back
in response to our pre-action protocol letter.
“Normally, if you look at a decision in an area where
public goods are at stake there is a wealth of
information made public. Take planning permission,
for instance. There is more information publicly
available about my neighbour’s small rear extension
than about the UK decisions on the public’s fisheries.
Yet the Fisheries Act requires transparency.”
Yet the government says its actions comply with the
Fisheries Act, with a spokesperson saying catch limits
“are based on the latest scientific advice to help protect
key fish stocks with the long-term health of the marine
UK FISH STOCK SIZE
Healthy 41%
Data limited 29%
Critical 25%
Unknown 5%
Source: Oceana
environment at the forefront of our minds”. The
foundation also argues the government is in
breach of the United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea, which is incorporated into UK
law. The convention states that “the coastal state,
taking into account the best scientific evidence
available to it, shall ensure through proper
conservation and management measures that the
maintenance of the living resources in the exclusive
economic zone is not endangered by overexploitation.”
Clover argues that the over-allocation of fishing
quotas is not only “bad for fish, but bad for
fishermen” because it is eroding the long-term
viability of their business.
He argues that the 2020 Fisheries Act is a “bad
law” because, unlike American fisheries
regulations, it does not set sustainability as a
“primary objective” that no other objective can
override.
“Oceana sued the American secretary of state
for commerce in 2005, saying that five species of
rockfish were in danger of being wiped out. As a
result, the secretary of state set up 30-mile-wide
trawling exclusion zones from the bottom of
California to the north of Washington state to give
those species a chance. Have you noticed us doing that
in the Celtic Sea for cod? No.
“We’re not addressing the obvious problem of
overfishing with the policy instruments that we know
from global practice will work. We’re just fudging it. It’s
not good enough. We’ll run out of fish.”
3
We tell seashells from
the sea floor: a new
alternative to dredging
T
CHARLOTTE ALT he oil and gas industry is known for
many things; helping to save the lives of
crabs, coral and shrimp is not one of
them. Yet decades of extracting fossil
fuels at sea has inspired pioneering
technology that reduces the
environmental devastation caused by
harvesting food from the seabed. For Oystein Tvedt,
32, who grew up on the west coast of Norway where
fishing and offshore energy work side by side, it made
sense to repurpose industrial knowledge this way.
“We saw that in subsea technology we are doing
“
highly advanced operations on the seabed like laying
pipes or building oilrigs,” Tvedt, the chief executive of
Ava Ocean, says. “We used this as a start for
developing technology in fishery that can be operated
on the seabed in a smart, efficient way but is also
sustainable and gentle to the environment.”
After more than seven years’ development, last
Dragging a December Ava Ocean harvested the first Arctic
scallops in the Barents Sea. It uses a method designed
metal cage to replace the harmful practice of dredging; most
scallops are harvested by dragging a cage across the
sea floor, catching not just scallops but anything else
that gets in the way of its metal teeth.
seabed harms Ava Ocean’s harvesting unit, by contrast, hovers a
metre above the seabed, gently sucking up individual
species like scallops through pipes. Using underwater cameras and
coral, seagrass, artificial intelligence, the unit sorts through the catch
and returns unwanted species to the ocean floor. Once
shrimp and crab the unit is full, it is lifted up to the vessel, the 85m-long
Arctic Pearl, where the scallops are processed.
In the UK scallops are an integral part of the fishing
industry. About 29,000 tonnes, worth £51 million, were
landed from 253 vessels in 2021, according to data from
SeaFish. Yet since dredging was developed in the 1970s
concerns have been raised about its impact. The
practice can reduce biodiversity, particularly harming
species such as sponges, corals, seagrass, shrimp and
crabs, according to Jean-Luc Solandt at the Marine
Conservation Society. “Think of it like a ploughed
field,” he says. “It’s dead apart from worms and
bacteria. It’s exactly the same on the seabed. Once
that’s levelled, you have less habitat for life.”
Some countries, including Norway, have introduced
a total ban but in the UK it is permitted in most areas
Before except for a few protection zones, including Lyme
Bay in the English Channel and Cardigan Bay
in the Irish Sea. Campaigners have long
called for a ban on dredging in all 377
marine protected areas (MPAs).
The government has introduced
mesh size limits, seasonal closures,
catch limits and restrictions on the
number of dredges. The environment
department says: “We are aiming to
stop damaging fishing activity in all
English MPAs by the end of 2024.
Four bylaws are already in place and
we have consulted on management of
13 further MPA sites.” The Scottish
government is developing “fisheries
management measures” for MPAs.
While the fishing industry has generally
After opposed an outright ban, Elspeth
Macdonald, the head of the Scottish
Fishermen’s Federation, says: “Many of the
fishermen we deal with have inquiring
minds — they want to be innovative to
ensure they can continue fishing for
the generations coming after them.”
Another promising technology is
being developed at Heriot-Watt
University in Edinburgh. By fitting
“skids” or “skis” to the bottom of a
standard scallop dredge, the
researchers can lift the metal 10cm
off the seabed, reducing damage while
increasing the catch by 15 per cent.
There have been other attempts to
modify fishing gear but Michel Kaiser,
professor of fisheries conservation at
Heriot-Watt, acknowledges that the “real
disruptor” is Ava Ocean, whose method not
only reduces damage but is profitable. As it
conducts a five-year research project to monitor the
The effects of dredging technology’s long-term impact, Ava Ocean has already
off the Isle of Arran turned its focus to adapting it to other seabed species.
4
Can AI translate
what whales are
telling each other?
Would-be Dr Dolittles of the deep are using tech to
eavesdrop on marine life, Georgia Heneage writes
I
magine, says Tom Mustill, a biologist turned
nature film-maker, that we are sperm whales in
the Caribbean, nattering away to one another in a
code of clicking sounds. All the while, our
conversation is being eavesdropped by scientists
using the latest artificial intelligence to try to
figure out what we are saying.
They can detect which of us is speaking at any given
moment and they know our conversation is complex.
We take it in turns to speak, we listen, and our speech
is structured by grammatical rules, like those of
humans. What they cannot make out, however, is what
any of it means.
The team of scientists, from Project Ceti, have
been trying to solve that puzzle since midway
through last year, when they began to record
sperm whales off Dominica. They then
analysed the recordings with cutting-edge
computer programs and in the spring their
efforts bore fruit — they believe they have
translated their first sperm whale word:
“dive”.
Mustill has tracked the researchers’
progress closely and compiled their efforts
into his book, How to Speak Whale. It was
published to great acclaim last year, and last
week a second edition hit shelves with an
afterword about the researchers’ new findings.
Sperm whales have “conversations” — that is,
they exchange meaningful bits of information
back and forth. They fall silent when hunting and
they chatter when they rise once again to the surface.
The team have managed to map out their phonetic
alphabet and it’s far less crude than they believed —
“as if somebody had characterised all of our
conversations merely by the pitch of my voice”, says
Mustill. They still don’t know what it all means but
pulling together the “ABC” might indicate if there’s a
code to crack, ie if the signals have meanings. The
indication so far is that they do.
Biologists already know that animals communicate
bits of information to one another — bees and ants, for
instance, use pheromone trails to chat — and that their
sounds vary depending on which community they
belong to. We’ve also been able to teach animals how
to understand spoken commands — research shows
that dolphins understand some forms of grammar —
and even hieroglyphics.
But copying is far simpler than deciphering meaning.
To do this, Ceti uses a machine learning technologies
that works a bit like ChatGPT or Google Translate. It
works on the theory that if AI can be used to find
patterns between different languages then it might be
able to translate between animals and humans.
Fed massive amounts of data, various AI tools will be
used to find patterns in the sounds by mapping their
relationships on to a graph, which scientists can then
cross-reference with the whales’ movements to link
patterns in their behaviour with patterns in their
communications. For example, says Mustill, “In what
other instance did a whale make that sound? Is it only
when someone’s born? Is it when they’re scared? Is it
when someone’s upside-down?”
Though the default is to explain “whale-talk”
through such analogies, words like “understand” or
“language” are misleading because they are tools with
which humans make sense of the world. Sperm whales
might be saying “dive”, but only because it’s the signal
they seem to make before descending into the deep.
“Humans are so focused on our idea of language,
Restoring the oceans
Click-click-click
. . . click click click
. . . click-click
and philosophically obsessed with the idea that we’re
the only ones with it,” says Mustill. “How do we know
how to see another one, or find the patterns of a
language that we’ve never experienced?”
Ceti’s work could reveal the closest comparison yet
between human and animal speech. But why whales?
The obvious choice would surely be primates, I suggest.
“Whales are the low-hanging fruit,” says Mustill,
because they rely on sound for communication and we
can record all their conversations, even at great
distances. They are better listeners and speakers than
most primates and they give so much of their bodies to
producing sound that it would be strange if their
language system were not complex and meaningful.
“It’s likely they’ve been vocalising to each other in
the sea for longer than we’ve been vocalising to each
other on land,” he says. “They live a long time in very
tight social groups and they need to communicate
very complicated things to each other. When
humpback whales hunt, they have distinct roles
where each one takes up different positions
with different specialities. You can’t just co-
ordinate that in the dark without
communication.”
The most powerful deciphering AI tools
are years away, as they require massive
datasets that are still being accumulated
by Ceti, but “it’s a bit like Nasa trying to
get to the moon”, Mustill says. “They
haven’t got there yet, but the early rockets
are getting into orbit, the systems to pilot
them are working and the moon is looking
like an object you can land on.”
If the researchers succeed in cracking whale
talk, the project could have far-reaching
implications for marine conservation. There are
already initiatives using AI to, for example, help to
protect whales by monitoring declining species.
Meanwhile, the project Whale Safe, based in the
shipping routes off San Francisco, detects the presence
of whales and alerts ship captains to avoid collisions.
By understanding whale communication, scientists
could recognise the priorities of a mammal that are
vital not only to its own ecosystem but to the planet as
a whole; whales store large volumes of carbon dioxide
in their bodies and their excrement spawns blooms of
phytoplankton that produce half of the world’s oxygen.
This is what motivates Mustill and the scientists at
Ceti. “Conservation is useless without working out
what’s important to the animals,” he says. If you are
going to save 30 per cent of the sea, he says, which 30
“
per cent is important to them? Is it the vessel speed in
oceans that harms whales, or a particular kind of fish
that has been hunted to extinction?
“We might be able to warn them away from
dangerous activities or deadly objects, like ghost nets
and drilling gear,” he says. “Or we might be able to
guide them away from stranding on shallow,
The research treacherous tidal beaches or through passages in Arctic
ice, or to let them know where they are hunted.”
could help us Tom believes his team’s work could help us to
understand why a pod of orcas has been attacking, and
find out why occasionally sinking, boats off southwestern Europe,
orcas have been and more recently off Scotland. Might they be saying,
“Oi, get your hands off my mackerel”, or “This [shove]
ramming boats is for the years you’ve hunted us, and this [shove] is for
cramming us into SeaWorld”?
— are they With any technological progress there are, of course,
challenges. Bad actors could harness the technology to
saying ‘Oi, get “deepfake” the sounds and play them back to whales as
off my fish’, or a way to hunt or capture them. Talking to whales
could, then, be another form of noise pollution, but if
‘this one is for used correctly and ethically, it could also vastly expand
our understanding of the animal kingdom and how
SeaWorld’? best to protect it.
THE TIMES 5
Thursday September 21, 2023

How robots could grow

seaweed on the oceanic
farmland of the future

W
BEN COOKE illie Athill used to make his
money transporting oilrigs
around the world. Now, having
returned from what he calls “the
dark side”, he believes he has
spied an opportunity to build a
business that mitigates climate
change rather than contributing to it. That opportunity
lies off Norfolk, where in April he secured a licence to
farm seaweed across 25 hectares of frigid, choppy sea.
Some of that seaweed will be used as fertiliser on
nearby farms, displacing fossil fuel-based products. And
some of it will be sold to Notpla, a company making a
biodegradable alternative to plastic packaging.
Potential uses include everything from cosmetics to
veggie burgers to fabrics and medicines. The farm will
also create habitat for marine life.
Athill, 65, is not the first entrepreneur to think
there’s money in this; the number of such farms has
risen from one in 2016 to ten in 2021. Yet he is the first
to partner with a robotics company that claims it could
help seaweed farming attain an industrial scale.
Seaweed farming is still largely done by hand. To check
on their crop, farmers must venture out to sea in small
boats and haul up the ropes on which it grows.
“It’s incredibly laborious work,” says Athill. “What
happens if a whale or something gets stuck in your
infrastructure? If you’re only going out there a couple
of times a week it could be stuck there for three days.”
The company he has partnered with, Samudra
Oceans, has created a robot that it claims can remove
the need for much of that arduous voyaging back and
forth. It is shaped like a transparent cylinder, about a
foot long, and is packed with sensors and wires.
Sitting on the sea floor, attached to a buoy, these
robots take pictures of the seaweed rig to check
whether it has been damaged by stormy weather.
Athill’s only other means of attaining this information
would be to send out two divers, at £2,000 each. The
robots also collect a wealth of other data, including the
amount of light reaching the seaweed, the strength of
the current and the water temperature and salinity.
Samudra’s chief executive, Joyeeta Das, is working on
an artificial intelligence program that will interpret all
this information and give advice about where to plant
in future.
Athill will deploy the robots next month, when he
seeds his first crop. Between then and April, when he
harvests it, he will still go out to the rig weekly, but
reckons that the robots will save him a further two
trips a week. “Going out to sea is jolly expensive,
dangerous and it uses up diesel. We would be mad not
to look at this technology, which will probably initially
be more expensive, but in the end more efficient and
cheaper. It’ll be crucial to us scaling up.” Athill is in
talks with Equinor in the hope of installing seaweed
farms between wind turbines in the North Sea. He
Sperm whales talk to each hopes eventually to be farming “300 to 400 hectares”.
other in a code that a Having developed robots to monitor seaweed farms,
team of scientists is trying Samudra is also making one to harvest it. It hopes to
to crack, with a view to automate the process of seeding too. Das argues that
also understanding such automation will be key as seaweed farmers
violent orcas, far left tell her labour accounts for 70 per cent of their
costs, which means they struggle to sell their
crop at the low prices buyers demand. Her
vision is for a seaweed industry every bit as
mechanised as the agribusinesses of the
American Midwest. “If we reach a scale
where, off Cornwall, there are 1,000
hectares of seaweed farming, where robots
are taking pictures of the crops, and when
the time is right they send harvesting
robots, and then drones collect the payload
and drop it in a factory, that’s when you
have proper scale. If we can do it for
Amazon shopping, we can do it for seaweed.
“In five years, the process should be 80 per
That’s easy for cent automated, and in ten years, the dream is
100 per cent. You still need a few people to make
you to say sure that nothing’s collapsing. You’d still have the
same staff, but instead of farming 40 hectares, they
could be farming 1,000.”
A robot developed by Samudra has so far received £700,000 in funding and
Samudra Oceans aims to hopes to raise £4 million in its next round. “This is
reduce the cost of labour exciting because we have never automated agriculture
in the sea before,” Das says. “We are in the midst of a
new industrial revolution and we are building the new
infrastructure of the world.”
6
Restoring the oceans

Offshore heatwaves leave spe

A sharp temperature rise has drawn out, chipping away at species’ resilience to the
changing climate, says Dr Dan Smale, of the Marine
sapped energy from the food chain Biological Association.
“For example, there’s a habitat-forming kelp, which is
and pushed birds’ prey to plunge found at its southern warm limit around the southwest
of England,” he says. “There’s been evidence of it
out of reach, Henry Bird discovers bleaching and having lower growth rates, so repeated
heatwaves will almost certainly erode its
resilience and eventually it will become

F
rom the ferry to the Isle of May, the waters
appear to be so teeming with marine life
that it’s difficult to believe they’re under
threat. After I set off from Anstruther, a
small fishing village on the north shore of
the Firth of Forth, soon a
pod of bottlenose
dolphins swims playfully in
the wake of the boat. In
the distance, the shallow arch of a
minke whale catches the morning light and gannets
fire themselves into the water.
As the island comes into view, the occasional puffin
emerges from the waves. The Isle of May is home to
46,000 breeding pairs from March until August, as well
as guillemots, razorbills and Arctic terns, which see it
as a safe nursery to raise their young.
This summer, however, the island has been at the
centre of an extreme marine heatwave that hit the
coasts of the UK and Ireland while marine temperature
records were broken around the world, with sea surface
temperatures in the North Sea 5C higher than usual in
June. Satellite data and physical monitoring in the
coming months and years will reveal a more detailed
picture of its impact on marine ecosystems, but for
David Steel, the Isle of May’s nature reserve manager,
there are already signs of trouble.
“For the first time in my 23 years on the island I
wasn’t working with Arctic terns,” he says. “They
turned up in mid-May and then didn’t breed. All
fingers are pointing to them not nesting because there
wasn’t the food availability.” Marine heatwaves tend to
concentrate towards the top section of the water
column, which is a problem for surface-feeding birds
like Arctic terns, because if fish migrate to deeper,
cooler waters, the birds can’t dive to the depths
required to catch their prey.
It’s not just the terns that have suffered. Puffins,
guillemots, razorbills: all of them were having to work
harder to find fish stocks. As a result, “birds were
leaving here lighter”, says Steel, an ominous sign given
that fat reserves are what keep the birds alive. He
shows me images of young guillemots and razorbills
washed up dead along the east coast of Scotland and
the northeast of England since the heatwave. While
avian flu has prompted mass die-offs of seabird
colonies, these deaths are testing
negative for the disease,
locally extinct.”
When it comes to the marine
ecosystem as a whole, he says
“the likely effects we’ll see will
be [a reduction in] reproduction,
abundance and biomass density
rather than obvious mass die-offs,
or where organisms have had their
thermal maximum exceeded, which is
what we’ve seen in Western Australia”. In
2011, a two-month marine heatwave hit the
ocean off that region, with catastrophic effects
on the ecosystem and fisheries. The impact on
kelp forests was immediate, with almost 50 per
cent perishing across a 100km area, which had
knock-on effects on scallop and crab populations.
According to a government report,
some fisheries were closed for
five years and some stocks
had still not recovered
after a decade.
The impact of this
summer on the UK
fishing industry
supporting the
theory that they
are related to the
effects of extreme
temperature.
Every scientist and researcher I speak to about the
heatwave is quick to draw attention to just how
anomalous it was in both magnitude and length. “It
goes way beyond the expectations that
were posed within the IPCC reports,” says
Dr Richard Unsworth of Swansea University,
referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, “which generally are the
conservative estimates. So it’s quite
frightening that we’re going way beyond
what is being modelled.”
Marine heatwaves have increased in
frequency by 50 per cent in the
past ten years, driven by climate
change, but scientists fear that the disruption
is being exacerbated by a strong El Niño
weather system, a shorter-term, cyclical change
in the Earth’s climate. A large part of that comes
down to how marine heatwaves affect plankton,
the microscopic building blocks of ocean food
chains. Increases in water temperature mean
phytoplankton productivity decreases, which
in turn means the zooplankton, the animal
kind, feeding on it are not as energy-rich. This
has a ripple effect up to the top of the food
chain, resulting in less energy for top predators
and making them less resilient to heatwaves.
Furthermore, because warmer water contains
fewer nutrients than cooler water, there’s
evidence of plankton migrating northwards,
pushing marine habitats out of alignment. With
the exception of birdlife, there haven’t been any
reports of mass die-offs of species due to the
heatwave — yet. Instead, the effects are likely to be

Jellyfish migrate to UK
Sightings of unusual
jellyfish are on the rise in
British waters, as well as
the closely related
Portuguese man o’war
(Anna Dowell writes). The
Marine Conservation
Society believes this is the
result of rising sea
temperatures. Bluefin
tuna, anchovies, squid
and great white sharks
are among the other
species fleeing the tropics
for cooler UK waters.
But for many, rising
temperatures are making
British waters less
hospitable. They can kill
salmon eggs, disrupting
the food source of otters,
eagles and waterfowl.
Another species to lose
out could be Britain’s
biggest fish, the basking Another seabird at risk
shark, as the plankton on from climate change
which they feed move affecting the availability of
away further north. its prey is the European
Hotter seas also put shag. The species is at risk
puffins in danger of a due to a decline in the
90 per cent decline in numbers of sand eels. The
numbers by 2050. They bird has recently been
could suffer as climate added to the UK’s Red List
change drives the small of conservation concern
fish they prey on away because of severe
from British waters. population decline.
 the times
Thursday September 21, 2023
ecies in hot water
has yet to materialise, but Dr John Pinnegar, of the
UK’s Centre for Environment, Fisheries and
Aquaculture Science, told Undercurrent News that for
marine heatwaves, “often the impacts only become
apparent years later”.
For other industries, the effects are more complex.
Duncan Jones is the co-owner of Marine Discovery
Penzance, a wildlife-watching company that offers
tours of Cornwall’s coastline, and this year’s heatwave,
along with other factors such as pervasive ocean
warming, has meant a bumper year for diverse marine
sightings.
“We saw flying fish right inshore, and flying fish just
shouldn’t be here,” he says. “They’re a subtropical
species. Anglers have also found pufferfish, which is
something that just wouldn’t turn up here, and we’re
also seeing swarms of crystal jellyfish in huge numbers,
which is another warmer-water
species.”
There has also been a glut of Risso’s
dolphin sightings, also associated with warmer
waters, as well as common dolphins, which have
been a boon for business. “From that perspective, being
able to take people out and show them dolphins every
time makes it really easy to sell trips,” Jones says. “But
while we’re going through a bumper abundance of
dolphin sightings at the moment, the long-term
implications of that are not necessarily positive.
Ultimately, top predators might struggle to find enough
food to have enough energy to reproduce properly, and
that’s very bad news for their population.”
So, since all projections indicate that more frequent,
stronger and longer-lasting marine heatwaves are
inevitable in the near future, what can be done going
forward? As with most climate problems, the
overarching answer is simple — cut greenhouse gas
emissions, mainly by cutting out fossil fuels. But while
we do that, we can help marine ecosystems cope with
the worsening impacts. “It’s about creating resilience in
systems, it’s about protecting biodiversity,” says
Professor Steve Widdicombe, director of science at
Plymouth Marine Laboratory, “so that when these
large global stresses come into play, you’ve given
them the best chance.”
The UK has made strides in ocean
conservation with the introduction of
marine protected areas, which cover
51 per cent of inshore and 37
per cent of offshore water
around England. While
covering a sizeable
area, they are not
a perfect
solution to
heatwave
mitigation, as “none of them have been
managed with climate change in mind”,
says Dr Nova Mieszkowska, of the University of
Liverpool and the Marine Biological Association. This
means that a marine area could be awarded the highest
level of protection, but through no fault of local
management practices, its effectiveness could be
undermined because it’s in a very climate-vulnerable
area. “It seems to be a good time to start linking up
climate change research with marine protected area
management and planning,” Mieszkowska says. “If we
can put them both together and use that information
for some kind of horizon scanning, we might be able to
manage our areas more effectively.”
One project helping to do just that is MSpace (Marine
Spatial Planning Addressing Climate Effects), led by
Professor Ana Queirós, which seeks to implement
“climate-smart” marine planning in UK waters. “At the
moment, England has chosen three highly protected
marine area sites [the highest level of protection], and
two of them (Dolphin Head and North East Farnes
Deep) are climate change hotspots,” she says. “So, in
view of pressures like heatwaves, MSpace is trying to
make sure that that information is included in the
decision-making process . . . so that if we’re going to
designate a highly protected marine area, we put it in a
place that’s a climate refuge that’s perhaps less sensitive
to climate change.”
7
Marine meadows on
our doorstep trap CO2
O
SONAL NAIN ffshore from the tiny fishing village of
Porthdinllaen, north Wales, there lies
a remnant of a habitat that used to
spread around the country’s coasts —
and that could now aid Britain in the
fight against climate change. “It’s a
kind of secret garden under the sea
that is absolutely teeming with life,” says Leanne
Cullen-Unsworth, the co-founder of Project Seagrass.
Lush green strands of the plant provide a habitat not
only for fish but also crabs and sea anemones. It is also
fantastically effective at taking planet-warming carbon
out of the atmosphere and storing it in its roots, doing
so up to 35 times faster than rainforests.
But the shallow bays that used to host seagrass
meadows are now largely empty of them. Scientists are
unsure quite how much seagrass the UK has lost due
to poor water quality, wasting disease and dredging but
the figure could be as high as 92 per cent.
The seagrass meadow in the waters off Porthdinllaen
is now the focus of an effort to restore the habitat more
widely. Last month Cullen-Unsworth and her team
worked alongside volunteers to collect one million
seeds from the village. Next year these will be planted
in the waters off Anglesey as part of the Seagrass
Ocean Rescue project, the UK’s largest seagrass
restoration project. The aim is to plant five million
seeds across ten hectares by 2026. “We have got a
massive opportunity and responsibility to put the
seagrass back and all the biodiversity that comes with
that,” says Cullen-Unsworth.
As that seagrass is returned to the waters of north
Wales, researchers at the University of Oxford are at
work on a project that could help finance their
“
restoration much further afield. Because seagrass is so
good at capturing carbon, its restoration could
generate lots of carbon credits. Companies aiming for
net zero that cannot stop all their emissions at source
could pay for the restoration of seagrass meadows to
offset their residual emissions. But right now this can’t
happen because there isn’t a “carbon code” that
Seagrass traps ombudsmen can use to work out how much carbon
seagrass meadows take in.
carbon dioxide Dr Melissa Ward is part of a team of Oxford-
affiliated academics drawing up that code. “Restoration
up to 35 times is expensive and challenging and time-consuming,” she
says. “So we need to find as many ways as we can to
faster than the support increased restoration. Funding from carbon
credits is just one way to do that.”
Amazon jungle Ward says there are “critical scientific gaps” that
need to be filled during the writing of the code, the
main one of which is quite how rapidly British seagrass
species take in carbon. Studies have shown how quickly
seagrass in other parts of the world absorb it, but if
carbon credit sellers simply assumed that all seagrass
absorbed it at equal speed, they would risk issuing
credits for carbon that hadn’t been absorbed. They are
keen to avoid the reputational damage that would
come of this, having witnessed the embarrassment of
the carbon credits company Verra this January when
an investigation by The Guardian found that more
than 90 per cent of its rainforest carbon credits were
worthless.
Ward and her fellow researchers are aggregating
data from seagrass restoration projects around the
country to see how quickly they absorb carbon. They
will use this as a basis on which to assume the rate at
which future UK seagrass projects would absorb it.
One reason why it is
important to kick-
start seagrass
restoration,
Ward says, is
that the
carbon it
stores is
“incredibly resilient”.
Whereas a forest
planted to
generate carbon
credits might burn
down in a
wildfire,a seagrass
meadow will
reliably lock carbon
away in its soil as
long as it is
protected.
“They’re really high-
quality carbon credits,”
she says.
8
Something fishy
about salmon
farming, says
kayak vigilante
Don Staniford paddles out at dawn
to film conditions in the lochs. He
tells Verena Mueller even a threat
of a lawsuit hasn’t stopped him
A
s Don Staniford brews his coffee in a
car park on Scotland’s west coast, he
whispers: “I’ve got to make sure no one
sees me.” He pulls his cap deeper into
his face, stuffs his hair underneath, and
puts up the hood of his jumper. Looking
at his sandals and Hawaiian shorts, he
explains: “I’ve dressed up as a German tourist.”
Staniford has been fighting the salmon farming
industry for 20 years. He has held demonstrations in
front of fish food factories, flown drones over the nets
and placed ads of fish that resemble monsters. Here on
the shore of Loch Linnhe, a three-hour drive northwest
of Glasgow, he is about to resume his campaign.
“I want to take down the industry,” he says, adding
that, to do so, he must “make its horror visible”. Over
the next ten days, he will drive more than 300 miles
along the coast, paddling out to salmon farms at dawn
in his kayak and boarding them — then filming the
conditions in which the fish live. He has to do so
undercover because he is already in legal trouble. The
Norwegian company Mowi, the world’s largest salmon
producer, has launched a court case against him in the
hope of banning him from approaching its farms. The
company declined to comment on the matter.
The salmon farms Staniford has visited along the
west coast consist of huge nets up to 25m deep,
suspended from rings of floats bobbing on the surface.
He says that some farmers manage to cram up to
100,000 salmon into these nets. Salmon faeces and
Restoring the oceans
pharmaceuticals leak out of them, providing the
nutrients for algal blooms and leading to dead zones on
the seabed. Farmed fish can also pass on sea lice to
wild fish, and breed with them if they escape. At the
same time, these farms don’t just produce fish, they
consume them in vast numbers. Worldwide, about a
quarter of all fish caught end up as fishmeal for farms.
Many environmentalists such as Staniford oppose
the farms not only for these reasons, but also because
the fish live short, unhealthy lives, often infested with
sea lice and viruses. According to the environmental
organisation WildFish, 4.6 million salmon died in
Scottish farms in the first half of this year.
Staniford is beginning his tour in Loch Linnhe
because it is the location of some of the salmon farms
with the highest mortality rates. At Scottish Sea Farms’
facility in Charlotte’s Bay on the loch’s southeastern
side, for instance, the figures for July show that 48 per
cent of the farm’s fish died during their production
cycle. At the company’s facility at Dunstaffnage, down
the coast, the figure was 56 per cent. The company says
this was due to warm waters bringing large numbers of
micro-jellyfish, which harmed the fishes’ gills.
Yet despite concerns about farmed fish and the wider
environment, the salmon industry is booming. There
are 205 farms in Scotland. The country is the third
largest producer in the world after Norway and Chile,
and the fish was the UK’s biggest food export last year,
bringing in £578 million.
That sum is set to grow further. In July, the Scottish
government published its plans to massively expand
cage capacity. Last year alone, according to the
industry association, salmon consumption in the UK
rose by almost 8 per cent compared with the previous
year to more than 63,000 tonnes. Many consider it the
greener and healthier alternative to chicken and pork –
and see the farms as a solution to overfishing.
Loch Linnhe is not only the site of some of the farms
with the highest mortality rates. It is also the planned
Staniford near a salmon farm in
west Scotland last month.
He says he wants to highlight the
“horror” of how fish are kept, left
location for a facility which — its developers argue —
could provide an example for the industry’s more
sustainable future. The company Loch Long Salmon is
consulting with local communities in the hope of
gaining permission to build a facility in the loch three
times the size of an average farm.
At this, the first “semi-closed” salmon farm in the
UK, the salmon nets would be wrapped in a membrane
to limit the escape of fish and pollutants into the sea.
The company claims that this method will be “cleaner
and greener” and that it will help to “save the planet”.
But resistance to the scheme is growing. Staniford
and other organisations such as WildFish have argued
that the company’s soaring rhetoric on sustainability
amounts to nothing more than “greenwashing”.
A local campaign group called Long Live Loch
Linnhe describes the farm as a “dangerous experiment”
that will only add more pollution into the loch.
Members of the Labour Party and the Greens have also
spoken out against the new technology.
“
Less than a year ago, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs
National Park Authority refused the company
permission to build a similar facility 90 miles to the
southeast, in Loch Long.
The managing director of Loch Long Salmon,
Stewart Hawthorn, denies his company is
greenwashing, saying that the new facility would be “a
The industry is genuinely different approach to producing food with a
low carbon impact.” He says that studies have shown
booming — that putting a membrane around salmon cages halves
the waste escaping into the sea. There are already
Scotland’s 205 dozens of these facilities in Norway and Canada. Yet he
adds that these facilities are more expensive because of
farms make the the extra materials they require, and the energy
country the involved in flushing out the waste and processing it.
But he expects the salmon to grow better and have
world’s third- fewer lice. “That saves money,” he says.
In which case, why did the authority reject the
largest producer company’s previous application? “Because they didn’t
the times 9
Thursday September 21, 2023

An octopus off Hawaii.

Some observers doubt
that cruelty-free farming
is possible given the
creatures’ solitary nature

Azores pioneers ask if lab meat can save

octopuses from going under the cleaver
BEN COOKE

understand it,” says Hawthorn. Now, he’s confident
that Argyll and Bute council will approve the facility in
Loch Linnhe because it is “much more experienced” in
dealing with salmon farming. “If we can show that our
system works, it will be copied quickly.” The council
declined to comment.
Semi-closed facilities aren’t the only way to make
salmon farming more sustainable. At the Scottish
Association for Marine Science in Oban, scientists have
developed a method using microscopy and water data
to detect sea lice as larvae. Until this breakthrough, it
was only possible to detect them as adults, by which
time they must be washed off the salmon with toxic
substances such as hydrogen peroxide.
Yet salmon farms will always have some
environmental impacts as long as they are situated in
the sea. This has led some entrepreneurs to conclude,
drastically, that the salmon must come ashore. Around
the world — in the US, China and Japan — there are
now dozens of land-based facilities where fish swim in
pools, leaving the natural world uncontaminated by
their waste. In the UK too, there are plans for land-
based salmon farms in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and the
village of Tayinloan on the Kintyre peninsula.
For land-based salmon to succeed, however,
companies must overcome formidable challenges,
including breeding fish that thrive only in fresh water.
This is because many on-land farms do without salt
water altogether, so as not to corrode the equipment.
Hawthorn is sceptical of land-based farming, citing
its high energy usage and space requirements.
Staniford is unswayed by the promise of these
technologies. In his view, no form of salmon farming
can “make a bad thing better”. He sees any way of
enclosing these migratory animals as “pure torture”.
The only salmon he’s willing to eat is a vegan
substitute, made from wheat and peas, coloured
orange, and tasting — he says — very similar to the
real thing. It’s already available on some Tesco shelves.
E
volution has given the octopus many gifts.
It can squeeze through gaps as small as its
eyes, solve puzzles and tell one human
from another. At the University of Otago,
New Zealand, one precocious cephalopod
learnt to squirt water at a light switch
because it preferred to live in darkness. At
the same country’s national aquarium in 2016, another
broke out of its tank, squeezed through a 50m
drainpipe and escaped into the sea.
Unfortunately for the octopus, evolution has also
made it delicious — so delicious that demand for its
meat has risen sharply. Between 1950 and 2015, catch
of wild octopuses increased more than tenfold to
400,000 tonnes. To satisfy this demand, the Spanish
seafood company Nueva Pescanova has applied for a
licence to build the world’s first octopus farm in the
harbour of Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. The habitually
solitary animals would be crammed into tanks, with as
many as 15 per square metre, and then killed by
exposure to icy water. The €65 million facility would
slaughter about a million octopuses a year, generating
3,000 tonnes of meat.
Animal rights activists note that the creatures have
Petri dish
been known to attack and eat each other when forced to plate
to live close together. Nueva Pescanova insists that in
its research facility it has bred docile octopuses that do Cell4Food is not the
not do so and do not try to escape. only company trying to
Yet 900 miles across the Atlantic, on Terceira Island make seafood in the
in the Azores, a group of researchers is working on lab. Around the world,
another way to satisfy the world’s escalating demand from California to Israel
for octopus, without killing a single animal. and Singapore,
Incorporated last year, it is Cell4Food, Portugal’s first companies are figuring
company growing cultivated meat. out how to fill our
Cultivated, or “lab-grown” meat is made by taking a plates with fish without
few cells from a live animal, then encouraging them to plundering the sea.
grow in a nutrient-rich broth, then arranging the Earlier this year the
resulting mass of muscle and fat into a texture Singapore-based
resembling that of animal flesh. Many companies are company Umami Meats
using this technique to cultivate chicken, beef, pork and partnered with
fish, and in some countries these products are arriving Steakholder Foods, an
on supermarket shelves. This year the US Department Israeli cultivated meat
of Agriculture approved the sale of chicken products company, to create a
from two firms — Upside Foods and Good Meat. 3D-printed grouper
To its owners’ knowledge, Cell4Food is the only fillet. Meanwhile,
company to apply this method to octopus. Frederico another Singapore-
Ferreira, its head of research and development, says based company, Shiok
that some of his colleagues are on the team because Meats, is at work on
they believe octopuses are so smart that people should lab-grown prawns,
never kill them. Others, like him, are less hardline — while California-based
they just think they should not be subjected to Finless Foods is
industrialised fishing. “We come from a country where creating
eating and capturing octopuses is a tradition,” he says. bluefin
“In the old times the fishermen used to catch them in tuna,
ceramic pots, but things evolve, and now they are using right,
plastic cages that catch other animals too, and they’re one of
intensifying their efforts because demand is increasing. the world’s
If you do it in the old way, and just take a few most
octopuses from the water, it’s fine, but if you intensify endangered and
the techniques it’s terrible.” Having formed last year, expensive animals.
the team decided to base themselves in the Azores
because of the archipelago’s rich marine ecosystem,
which offers the chance to take cells from many
different animals (they also intend to grow molluscs
and crustaceans). Since then, they have taken octopus
biopsies and managed to grow them in a nutrient
mixture. Science-fictional as this process may seem, it
doesn’t actually result in a fully formed tentacle, just a
protean mass, so the next challenge is to arrange it into
a shape that resembles octopus meat.
The company intends to sell the meat in medallion
slices like those in the traditional dish pulpo a la gallega.
To do this, it puts the meat into a lattice made of plant
protein, designed to mimic the structure of octopus
meat, so the finished product will not be pure octopus;
it will be a “hybrid” of meat and plant protein.
In these early days of the lab meat industry, this is
standard practice — Good Meat’s chicken nuggets are
70 per cent chicken, 30 per cent plant-based. But as the
industry gets better at mimicking the texture of meat,
the idea is to reduce the amount of plant protein.
Ferreira adds that octopus meat, consisting almost
entirely of muscle, is easier to mimic than the complex
layering of muscle and fat in many other meats.
Though the company has made a prototype of its
pulpo a la gallega medallions, it has yet to apply for
approval by food standards agencies, a process that no
lab-grown meat company has completed in Britain or
the EU. The team expects this to take two years.
Even after approval, the company’s co-founder and
strategist, Vítor Verdelho, expects it will take a long
time for his company to take market share away from
those fishing and farming octopus. “There is so much
demand for octopus that, for many years, fishing,
farming and cultivation will co-exist.” He holds out
hope, however, that cultivation could make
industrialised octopus fishing obsolete. He believes
farming should go ahead, but in a “cruelty-free” way in
which “the animals are grown in as close to natural
conditions as is possible”.
Yet Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental
science at the University of Miami, doubts that cruelty-
free farming is possible. Compared with
cows and pigs, so little research has
been done on captive octopuses
that, she says, “we don’t know
how to give them happy lives.
They have these incredible
minds that we just don’t
know what captivity would
do to.” She would like to see
all octopus meat cultivated
rather than farmed or fished.
“We know that [cultivation] will
involve some energy use, we know
we’ll have to take biopsies from
live animals . . . But it looks
vastly different,
compared to a giant
factory to mass-produce
living, breathing, thinking
animals.”
10
A wave energy generator
off the Orkney Isles
Wave power is
making some
headway at last
Attempts to tame the sea’s energy
have been beset by failure but
scientists find optimism in
unlikely places, finds Max Kendix
I
t seemed a fantastic idea — after years of wind,
sun and hydropower dominating renewable
energy deployment, the largest untapped energy
resource on earth was about to have its moment.
The world’s biggest wave energy project was
announced with great fanfare in February 2014, to
be built off the coast of Victoria, Australia, and
backed by the defence contractor Lockheed Martin.
But just five months later the whole plan was scrapped
— it was “not commercially viable”.
For those who wish waves to be the next wind in
powering our energy needs, the story was depressingly
familiar. Despite dozens of attempts there remains not
a single commercial wave power plant that sells the
energy it generates.
“When I talk to investors about wave energy they
say it’s a start-up graveyard,” says Olivier Bourdin, the
co-founder of the British start-up WaveX. “There have
been a number of failures in the UK and this is the
reputation it has.” Yet experts believe, for all the ups
and downs wave energy has faced in the past decade, it
could provide up to a fifth of the UK’s electricity output
Restoring the oceans
by 2050. It will be a choppy journey to such heights.
“The first problem you have is just the physics of
waves,” says Cameron McNatt, the founder of Mocean
Energy, a Scottish offshore renewable energy company.
“A turbine is a very standard type of equipment, and
that can deal with one type of movement very well. But
with waves, they go up and down, and back and forth.
And that requires a very different type of technology.”
Even once a prototype is theorised, it is not
something that can be easily tested on a small scale in
lab conditions. And while centuries of research has
gone into making ships and platforms stable, there has
been very little work on how to make something as
unstable as possible in the ocean: the more unstable,
the more energy it generates.
Large floating metal platforms were the first attempt
at extracting energy from waves. Hydraulic rams,
divided into five sections, would hang from the
platform’s joints, and the pressure change from the
flow of waves in turn drove electrical generators inside
the device. It worked, but proved prohibitively
expensive.
“You’re trying to harness the power of the sea,” says
Deborah Greaves, professor in ocean engineering at
the University of Plymouth. “So you’re trying to design
a machine that’s going to respond to the energy in the
waves. You want it to move around and be active but
you also want it to survive when there’s a storm.
“So when the waves get too big, it still has to survive
and can’t escape from the wave. It’s a really difficult
design challenge.” The risk of wave technology being
SURF’S UP?
Projected electricity generation capacity
Wave power Tidal stream Hydro power Solar
Offshore wind (floating) Offshore wind (fixed) Onshore wind
Hydrogen Biomass and waste Nuclear Gas
Oil and coal Interconnector
250 GW
200
150
100
50
0
2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050
Source: Stegman, Anna & Andres, Adrian & Jeffrey, Henry & Johanning, Lars & Bradley, Stuart. (2017).
Exploring Marine Energy Potential in the UK Using a Whole Systems Modelling Approach
ruined by storms is much greater than for wind
turbines: water can be far more chaotic than air in a
storm, and is about 800 times denser. There are,
however, reasons to be optimistic. As countries deploy
more and more solar and wind energy, they will also
have to invest in other energy sources that
counterbalance their variable output.
Rémi Gruet, chief executive of the trade body Ocean
Energy Europe, believes wave energy is the perfect
candidate. “The wind generates a wave. So when the
wind dies and the wind turbines stop, the wave energy
devices will continue generating energy. There is a
great interest to develop technologies that are going to
produce [energy] at a different time from when the
wind blows or the sun shines.”
One potential client for the wave industry is the oil
and gas sector. Offshore rigs need energy to run, and it
can be cheaper to install a wave energy plant on board
than use unwieldy batteries, diesel generators or miles-
long cables on the seabed.
McNatt appreciates the irony of a clean energy
source hitching a ride on oil platforms but says: “You
have to start somewhere. Just like solar started in outer
space, wave energy is going to get its commercial start
in the sort of off-grid applications where it has a
unique and strong-value proposition.”
Remote islands and coastal communities that are
reliant on diesel generators would be next.
Bourdin’s WaveX hopes to reignite the nascent
industry with a relatively new approach that
circumvents many of the problems faced by more
established rivals. WaveX places devices on the seabed
“
instead of setting them afloat on the surface.
As the waves travel, they create pressure variations
that reach the ocean floor. Flexible bags containing air
are then compressed, pumping air through a turbine
that generates electricity.
Help from the Scottish government in particular, and
the prime location of the British Isles to exploit the
steady flow of waves coming in from the Atlantic, have
The risk of wave so far given the UK the edge in wave energy research
and development.
technology But Gruet says government and private investors in
being ruined by Europe have to move quickly to make sure the
Continent keeps its edge in the wave energy race. Last
storms is much year capacity additions for wave energy in Europe were
lower than in any other year since 2010. Meanwhile,
greater: water is the US government plans to invest more than $500
million in the development of ocean energy up to 2025,
more chaotic and China pledged the “large-scale development” of
than air in a ocean energy in its most recent five-year plan.
“The US and China are heavily investing in wave
storm and 800 energy at the moment,” Gruet says. “We’re getting to
the point where if we don’t ramp up investments,
times denser Europe risks losing its advantage.”
the times 11
Thursday September 21, 2023

UK guards a galaxy of species

Our overseas territories teem with
life and the Foreign Office wants Falkland Islands
to ensure the sun never sets on
British fish, writes Michael Binyon

S
ome 90 per cent of all Britain’s biodiversity is
in its overseas territories. These 14 small
South Atlantic
islands and territories around the globe hold Ocean
an astonishing range of species and flora,
and are home to 1,500 endemic species —
30 miles
94 per cent of the total — compared with
only 90 endemic ones in mainland Britain.
St Helena, the remote South Atlantic island to which
Napoleon was sent into exile, alone accounts for 30 per
cent of Britain’s entire biodiversity despite being less
than a third of the size of the Isle of Wight.
In addition, the overseas territories play a huge role
in marine conservation, with vast areas of sea around
them designated special protection zones. Britain,
together with its territories, is responsible for the fifth-
largest area of ocean in the world, and has set up huge
new conservation zones in which fishing, exploration
and uses of the seabed are strictly controlled.
These make Britain one of the world’s biggest
guardians of the sea, and it is a responsibility taken
seriously by environmentalists in the Foreign,
Commonwealth and Development Office. Britain’s
flagship project is the Blue Belt Programme. Since its
initiation in 2016 this scheme has grown to include the
waters of many of Britain’s overseas territories,
providing protection to 4.3 million square kilometres of
ocean. That’s almost 60 per cent of an area spanning
6.8 million sq km of sea.
As a result, Britain is at the forefront in pushing for a
new global “30 by 30” target to protect 30 per cent of
the world’s oceans by 2030. To help do this, Britain
created the Global Ocean Alliance in 2019 to support
this goal and the membership has now expanded to 73
members.
Defining “protection” is key to the programme. The
obvious first step is to stop unlimited fishing. In some
areas, it is prohibited, especially when marine parks are
set up. In others, fishing is limited by quotas. The
difficulty comes in policing these huge areas.
St Helena, which has a valuable tuna fishing
industry, has recently tightened up the 100 miles
South St Helena
protections against overfishing and the Georgia
enforcement of protection of its waters. Islands
Fishing gear and methods are to be more South
strictly regulated to reassure consumers that Sandwich
South Islands South
the tuna is ethically sourced. Atlantic
A much more rigorous conservation zone Atlantic
Ocean Ocean
has been set up in the waters around the
British Indian Ocean Territory, which is now
depopulated and closed to outside visitors,
with an American airbase the only main Two miles
settlement. The waters around these islands are
exceptionally rich, with more than 220 species of
coral, 855 species of fish and 355 species of molluscs.
Since 2010 the new 640,000 sq km conservation zone
has banned all commercial fishing and seabed mining.
It is estimated that Britain now offers protection to 1.5
per cent of all the world’s near-surface coral reefs.
The territory, however, is the subject of a long-
running dispute with Mauritius and with the Chagos
Islanders who were forcibly resettled.
A tribunal found that Britain should not have
established the zone unilaterally, and negotiations are
continuing about a possible return of the islanders. It is
hoped that a compromise will not upset the marine
protection zone, however.
In addition to St Helena and the British Indian
Ocean Territory, the Blue Belt Programme includes
Ascension Island, the Pitcairn Islands (with fewer than
50 inhabitants), Tristan da Cunha, the British Antarctic
Territory and South Georgia and the South Sandwich
islands. mainly of two species of squid and the valuable Britain’s islands and capable of 28 knots (about 32mph), can stay at sea for
Marine protection goes hand in hand with the plans toothfish, but there is now no free-for-all as there used waters around the globe 30 days. The entire area is monitored by a
to protect unique and endemic species on land, and the to be in the South Atlantic. Most of the fishing fleets are home to rockhopper sophisticated satellite system.
Foreign Office is keen to ensure that the inhabitants of are from Taiwan and southeast Asia, which is where penguins, whale sharks All this activity stands in perhaps sad contrast to the
the overseas territories have the skills and capacity to most of the catches are sent. Individual transferable and elephant seals safeguards offered to the oceans around Britain itself.
do much of the work themselves. quotas were introduced in 2006, with long-term joint While marine protected areas cover 51 per cent of its
The Falkland Islands are not part of the Blue Belt venture agreements. inshore and 37 per cent of its offshore waters, many
but have nevertheless been pioneers of a strict, A number of swift modern fishery patrol vessels conservationists scorn these areas as “paper parks”,
sustainable fishing policy. Set up in 1986, its economic respond to any reports of pirate fishing ships or of offering little actual protection to marine life. With 92
exclusion zone allows licences to only a few fishing abuses of the system. Rogue ships can be impounded per cent of Britain’s domestic protected areas open to
companies, which all pay a high price, bringing and the Falklands government can confiscate catches destructive forms of fishing such as dredging and
valuable income to the islands and paying for the and impose fines, ban or suspend licences of vessels trawling, the overseas territories remain a far better
enforcement. They have the right to very large catches, exceeding their quotas. The patrol ship, which is place to be a fish.
 Your guide to our
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